Robotic Arm – Test 1 from Noah King on Vimeo.

After facing enormous challenges with the DC motors, I thought I would give the servos a try. To do so, I constructed a simple robotic arm with three sections and two joints. The whole construction was cobbled together and fairly rickety, which lead to some weight and balance issues.

But the servos did work, and I liked the use of the analog dials to control the movement.

Robotic Arm – Test 2 from Noah King on Vimeo.

In this test, the robotic arm waves nicely, but still the balance was a major issue. I tried to use counter weights to keep the arm’s lower limb from bending over, but then the whole construction became too heavy and the servo was no longer powerful enough to move the second joint.

This lead to the decision to build a simpler set of arms for the next test.