As part of a Systems Engineering project i am making a 6DOF articulated robot arm. Currently the plan is to use a Pico W to control the robot arm, and have a ps4 controller send inputs to the computer, to send to a server (probably Adafruit) to send the input data to the pico to control the arm. Most robot arms i can find online use Arduinos, so i want to know if i should use an arduino instead and if so which model.
I also want a magnet switch in place of the grip claws, i have a design for the magnet switch but i want to know which servos (4 total) i should use which would allow the arm to pick up ~10kg and move it around.
There are a vast number of MCU that will manage 4 servos with ease. They will all have libraries that make driving servos a trivial task. Other criteria will be more important than ability to manage a servo. In this case communicating with the PS4 and the server would be the critical criteria, and the Arduinos for which you have seen those examples are likely deficient in this regard. It will also be important that you are comfortable with the development environment available for the MCU.
Each servo will be provided with a torque rating, so you need to know what torque is required for that weight. This will depend on the lever arm and whether the lift is driven direct from the servo arm or via a gear, pully etc. For an example specification, see here:
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Hey @Jack271011, Welcome to the forums!
This sounds like a cool project. I second what Jeff has said about the servos, you will need to know more information about the length of the lever arms involved in the robot arm to be able to confidently pick a servo for the job.
As for the microcontroller to use. Arduino will have a ton of servo libraries and example projects around for this sort of thing but will lack an inbuilt method for connecting to your computer to receive commands.
Because of this you have most likely made the correct choice choosing a Pico W. Adding wireless connectivity via WiFi or Bluetooth to an arduino is by no means impossible but will add more complexity to this project.
I would recommend doing some research into Pico based robot arm projects. You should be able to tell from some light research which direction will be the easiest go down based on your skillset.
Hope this helps!
Sam
