MPERL: Hardware and Software Co-design for Robotic Manipulators ©

Abstract

Building small custom robots is getting democratized thanks to affordable tools like 3D printers and micro controllers. However, it still requires expertise from a wide range of domains: from designing the mechanical parts to writing the code that controls the robot. We present MPERL, a tool to help non-experts build custom robotic manipulators. MPERL starts from an abstract description of the robot's kinematic structure which contains information about joints, actuators, and sensors. The structure is refined with an easily manufactured geometry. Furthermore, from the structure MPERL generates control code which can be used to move the robot to a target configuration. We evaluate MPERL on a range of common robotic manipulator architectures, both serial and parallel.