SCARA Half Watt ~ ECE342 W26 Group 28

Junior Design
Spring 2025
Winter 2026

The goal of the project is to create a 2-axis robotic arm that is capable of performing certain repetitive tasks in the SCARA topology, where the movement is parallel to the ground plane. Given that many manufacturing processes today operate through robotic movement, the SCARA topology can be tremendously applicable across various industries. The movements made possible by the 2 rotating joints, later referred to as the shoulder and elbow joints, mimics movement of the human arm and can support in reducing wait times in repetitive tasks along assembly lines. The system utilizes a Raspberry Pi for the display and computing power of the machine with a connected ESP-32 to communicate with the motors. The Raspberry Pi also takes input from the user interface through a touchscreen that the GUI is displayed on. Additionally, given high power consumption in the implemented technologies and DC to DC buck converter is employed to bring the voltage down to 5 V from the 12 V DC that’s supplied to the whole system and motors. A challenge we faced during development was the power consumption of the product. Various components implemented in the design can take in high amounts of power for example, the motors can handle anywhere from 8 V to 48 V with 1.5 Amps per phase and the Raspberry Pi needs a nominal current of 2.5 Amps for stable connection. In the initial step various LDO schematics were implemented to convert the voltage down with necessary current specifications, however, if current reflection occurs at any point with LDO designs it may result in unreliable power supplies and lead to power surges. As a result, a solution we implemented was the use of a DC to DC buck converter to remove risks of power surging. A notable accomplishment was employing the communication between the Raspberry Pi and the ESP-32. Since there were initial issues with clock timing of the two components and the exceeded output voltage of 3.5 V off of the Raspberry Pi it was very gratifying to find solutions to drop down the voltage see the working communication to the motor drivers.

13 Lifts 

Artifacts

Name Description
Executive Project Summary Summary of design solutions, project procedures and timelines, and key learned lessons.   Download
Project Summary Video Details Video summary of design process and system content.   Link
Initial Movement Initial movement of the robot under first test.   Link
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