We  picked up a LynxMotion robotic arm from the  Drexel autonomous lab yesterday, as well as an Arduino board.  The Arduino board is responsible for receiving signals from the computer and translating that to motion in the servos.  Please see reference 1 for more information on the Arduino board. Initially, the robotic arm had additional servos, joints, and a gripper on the end that was not necessary.  We removed the unnecessary components, as seen in the pictures below.

Before Removal

After Removal

Removing the additional parts also decreased the strain on the needed servos tremendously.  The arm will move in an x direction and a y direction.  The x direction rotates about the black base seen in the photos above, and the y direction operates by the top joint and visible servo.

The servos were then connected to the Arduino board after simple cutting and stripping of a few wires.  The Arduino board was then connected to the computer using a USB cable.  C++ coding will be used for this project.  Using example codes from the Arduino website (found on references page), a simple code was created to rotate the arm along the x axis.  This code was then expanded to move on both the x and y axes.

Achieving motion in the arm after one day was a huge achievement.  Below is a short video of the motion of the arm at the end of day 1.