Control and simulation of a robotic arm with virtual reality

Industry 4.0 and the digital factory represent fundamental technologies for designing, simulating, optimizing, and interacting with physical production systems remotely or collaboratively through virtual reality. Recent experiences in industrial and space applications have demonstrated that virtual reality techniques can open new horizons when combined with versatile robot control techniques. Thus, Virtual reality techniques pave the way for a new quality of user-friendly human-machine interfaces in robot control technology by providing an "extended arm" to the physical environment for situations such as sustainability and testability. In this study, the aim was to develop systems that integrate these two environments, allowing control of an existing system in the real world remotely, thereby reducing factors like the cost problem in prototyping and occupational safety risks. Accordingly, a robotic arm, which is the most commonly used and still evolving mechanism today, was selected to operate within an integrated system in both real and virtual environments. In this context, the created robotic arm was integrated to work with Virtual Reality (VR) interfaces based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) and Unity3D software program. Initially, the robotic arm with 3 degrees of freedom (3DOF), which constitutes the main axes, was detailed. Then, the model was developed into a mechanism with 5 degrees of freedom (5DOF). Forward and inverse kinematic methods were used for the movement mechanism of the robotic arm. Homogeneous transformation matrices, a forward kinematic method, were utilized to measure the accuracy of the robotic arm's movement. Python programming language was used for matrix calculations. An Arduino development kit was used for the movement of the robotic arm created in the real world. For the movement mechanism of the robotic arm in the virtual environment, the gradient descent algorithm was utilized. Virtual Reality Headsets and Consoles were used for the control of the robotic arm in the virtual environment.