Design And Control of an Articulated Robotic Arm for Archery

The significance of robots and artificial intelligence is gaining popularity, especially in education, industries and warehouse stores. This role can be further applied in sports and medical areas, where robots can imitate human movements and perspectives. An articulated robotic arm, motion controllers, and a vision-based targeting system are components of an archery robot’s robotic system. This paper highlights the development of the targeting system by comparing the OpenCV Circle Hough Transform (CHT) algorithm with the colour and contour detection algorithm. Using these algorithms, the robot was able to find the centre of the target in a pre-determined x-y plane viewed from a webcam, draw the arrow, and finally release the arrow. This paper proposes using a Universal Robot UR5 robotic arm with a standard gripper to shoot an arrow at a target using a detection algorithm. The gripper was chosen as it can perform a thumb draw style of shooting, using a single motor to grip and release the string. This paper also provides a proof of concept algorithm that can detect a target using a webcam at 87.56% accuracy and then control a UR5 manipulator to shoot an arrow to hit the target.