The use of a robotic arm for displacement measurements in a cantilever beam

Abstract

This paper is aimed to present a displacement measurements technique which was performed automatically in a cantilever beam using a robotic arm manipulator. This technique is based on the difference of measured coordinates of the robotic arm manipulator in order to provide displacement results. The robotic arm was supported by a micro-switch sensor which in contact with a sample, measured 21x3 points distributed along the sample. Measurements were performed before and after adding the loads on the free end of the cantilever beam, manufactured in ASTM A36 steel. Experiments were performed through loads of 1.96 N, 4.9 N, 9.8 N and 19.6 N using the robotic manipulator controller. Ten sets of measurement were performed for each load. The average and standard deviation for each set of points were also performed. Results were compared to Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations in order to verify the accuracy of the proposed compared to FEM results. Sum of squared errors presented values lower than 3% demonstrating the potentiality of the proposed technique for industries application.