Design, Simulation and Implementation of Four Degree of Freedom SCARA Robot

Robotics has become an integral component of higher education laboratories. However, most commercially available robots are expensive and primarily intended for industrial applications. Cost-effective alternatives are essential to enable students to engage with key concepts such as dynamics, design, sensing, kinematics, and control. This paper presents the design and implementation of a four-degree-of-freedom (DOF) SCARA robot developed for demonstration in research, educational, and exhibition settings. The designed robot supports operations such as pick-and-place and laser plotting. Before a prototype is created, a stress analysis is conducted. Next, the robot's dynamics, direct and inverse kinematics are modeled. Given the great speed, accuracy, and repeatability of the SCARA robot. Moreover, a novel approach in this work that combines it with a laser engraving machine has been suggested. A versatile and adjustable laser engraving system that can engrave 3D drawings on a range of materials, especially wood surfaces, by fusing the SCARA robot with a laser engraving machine is developed. Furthermore, this paper addresses the modeling of an improved structural configuration to enhance the applicability of SCARA robots in small-scale applications, particularly those suited for student experiments and scientific research. Based on the robot’s design, the model is created by analyzing its workspace, creating a schematic diagram and matching Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) characteristics, and building a kinematic model in MATLAB with the related reference frames. The kinematic-model of the SCARA robot is developed using the homogeneous-transformation-method. Then, the forward and inverse kinematics' closed-form solutions are obtained.