ar3

Overview ¶

Package ar3 is a Golang library implementing serial commands for the AR3 robotic arm.

Basics ¶

The AR3 robotic arm is a low cost + open source 6 axis robotic arm designed and created by Chris Annin of Annin Robotics. Annin Robotics provides software for operating the robotic arm, but this software is designed for windows and is not useful for devices for like raspberry pis.

This Golang library takes over for the local robotic control software by implementing the functions needed to communicate with the arduino on the AR3 or AR2 robot.

We do not yet support encoders in the AR3, nor any other commands. All other rountines can be reproduced in code and not directly on the robot.

Testing ¶

Testing can be done with the AR3simulate struct, which satisfies all of the interfaces of AR3. For real connection to a robot, use connect to the robot using `Connect` instead of `ConnectMock`.

Compatibility ¶

The code here is only designed to function on linux machines directly connected to the AR3 robotic arm. It uses a couple of serial port configuration variables specific to linux systems. We use as few packages as possible, with the only non-standard package being golang.org/x/sys/unix, which carries unix file variables that help us open the serial port.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"github.com/koeng101/ar3"
)

func main() {
	arm := ar3.ConnectMock() // arm := ar3.Connect("/dev/ttyUSB0")
	// Move the arm. First 5 are rational defaults, following 6 numbers are joint stepper counts, and the final is the track length.
	_ = arm.MoveSteppers(25, 15, 10, 20, 5, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 500, 0)
	fmt.Println("Moved arm!")
}

Output:

Moved arm!