Abstract—The growing popularity of manipulators in industry has increased the need for mastery of knowledge about the kinematics and dynamics of manipulators. On the other hand, manipulators are not affordable items for learning purposes, so modeling is one of the right solutions as well as a new form of contribution to introduce physical manipulators without having to have many manipulators in the laboratory. Through this work, a 4-Degree of Freedom (DOF) manipulator can be physically modeled similarly to its original form as an educational robot, and a dashboard can be designed to control its movement. The mechanical physical model of the manipulator is developed using Autodesk Inventor, and the setting of the manipulator parameter is done using the Graphical User Interface (GUI) MATLAB. The manipulator model used is Dobot Magician which has four revolute joints. The advantages of modeling using Autodesk Inventor design tools are an intuitive user interface, easy to understand, and student-free license, so it is more friendly to students than other design software such as in the existing study. As a learning media, this modeling has been very complex to learn mechanical design, converting into MATLAB with XML (extensible markup language) extension on Simscape Multibody, setting kinematics and dynamics on Simscape, and designing control interface using GUI on MATLAB. This work proves the accuracy of robot movement with the path planning method set through the GUI based on the forward kinematics and reverse kinematics approaches.

Keywords—dobot magician, educational robot, physical modeling, forward kinematic, inverse kinematic

Cite: Emmanuel Agung Nugroho, Joga Dharma Setiawan, and M. Munadi, "Physical Modeling of a 4-DOF Manipulator for Learning Purposes Using CAD and GUI," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 392-401, 2024.

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