Project AIGAVA, short for AI and Vision Assisted Gesture Arm, has been envisioned by a small group of creative tech-students. Seeking a more mechatronical project for our minor we introduced the idea of a multipurpose robotic arm controlled by means of hand gestures. We are a team of five Engineering students with different technical backgrounds.
Project description
In multiple fields a robotic arm is used to simplify tasks. For instance, in healthcare, video-/photography and wrapping stations. These arms are, almost always, bespoke, premade for specific movements only or controlled manually. In short, there is an abundancy of single-purpose systems that all require different skillsets to operate. This sparked the teams to develop Project AIVAGA (AI and Vision Assisted Gesture Arm).
Project goals
Since moving one’s hand is a natural movement, using hand gestures will make the robot intuitive to operate, without requiring extensive training. The only needed knowledge to operate it, will be knowing what hand gestures are available. The AIVAGA project will also be set-up to be multipurpose, allowing the end user to solely modify the end of the arm to their wishes, without having to redesign the entire arm.
To have a workable prototype, the team will focus on a single purpose, which will be having the arm paint on a canvas the size of 40x40cm, with the aid of hand gestures made by the user.
Project result
The mecahanical and electrical design of the arm have been completed. Gestures can be recognized reliably using Machine Learning techniques. The prototype was presented at the project market at the end of the semester. For a fully functional prototype, the team needs to solve some remaining issues with ROS (the Robot Operating System) used to interconnect the various software modules.
Video
Acknowledgement
A big “Thank You” goes to our Fontys project tutor for keeping us motivated and focussed when facing huge technical challenges.