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The hard part is repeatability. You need tight tolerances and each joint in the arm adds inaccuracy the further you get from the base. If the base has 1mm of wiggle, the 20cm arm has 4mm wiggle at the end, and the arm beyond it has even more.Could this be solved by software instead of expensive hardware?
Some idea I had a while ago was to build an arm out of cheap, "wobbly" components for the large-scale movements, but then add some stages at the end that have a small movement range, but can be controlled very precisely.
Finally, add a way to track the deviation of the tool's actual position from the desired position very precisely, maybe with a tool-mounted camera.
Then you could have a feedback loop in software which tracks the tool's deviation from the desired position and uses the "corrective" stages at the end to counteract it.
I'm not sure if this would work, however.
(There is also the question how long the "counteracting" would take. It's one thing to "eventually" arrive at the desired position at the end of the path - e.g. for pick-and-place - and another to stay below some maximum deviation for the entire path, e.g. for etching or welding.)
Could this be solved by software instead of expensive hardware?
Some idea I had a while ago was to build an arm out of cheap, "wobbly" components for the large-scale movements, but then add some stages at the end that have a small movement range, but can be controlled very precisely.
Finally, add a way to track the deviation of the tool's actual position from the desired position very precisely, maybe with a tool-mounted camera.
Then you could have a feedback loop in software which tracks the tool's deviation from the desired position and uses the "corrective" stages at the end to counteract it.
I'm not sure if this would work, however.
(There is also the question how long the "counteracting" would take. It's one thing to "eventually" arrive at the desired position at the end of the path - e.g. for pick-and-place - and another to stay below some maximum deviation for the entire path, e.g. for etching or welding.)