1. Improved Robotic Arm for Sensitivity Characterization of Occupancy Sensors Will Hedgecock Brian Auerbach John Sullivan

2. Project Requirements Controlled movement through 90° of an arc in one second Vertical and horizontal movement, but not simultaneously Arm mounted exactly 36” above floor surface on a movable cart Remote control (>50 ft.) via a PC Exactly 15” of heated area on an 18” arm Adjustable temperature control with the range 80 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, accurate to within 2 degrees Fahrenheit

3. Previous Project Problems Heating element did not emit IR waves within a satisfactory range of an actual human arm Heating element did not emit IR waves uniformly through space Robotic arm shook violently when starting and stopping movement Servo motors overheated when holding robotic arm at 90° angle with floor for an extended amount of time Robotic arm did not always respond to UI key presses, resulting in the necessity of multiple key presses to create robotic arm movement

4. New Project Improvements Use of heating element which emits in the proper IR range, matching that of a human arm Implementation of heating element such that there are no gaps spatially in the emitted IR waves; i.e. must emit uniformly Use motors with enough torque to start and stop motion of robotic arm without jerking or causing other undesired movements Use motors which will not overheat when holding the robotic arm at 90° for an extended period of time Ensure that key/button presses will always result in the intended motion of the robotic arm

5. Heating Options IR-Emitting LEDs Spray-On Emitter Tungsten Wire

6. Infrared LEDs Extremely directional Emits IR wavelengths on the scale of nanometers We require micrometers Human IR emission ≈ 9.4 μm Difficult to arrange cylindrically such that they emit a uniform IR spectrum, leaving no gaps between emissions

7. Tungsten Wire Must be EXTREMELY hot in order to emit in necessary IR range Moderately priced Can be wrapped around a cylindrically-shaped arm Easy to “kink” wire, causing it to break

8. Spray-On Emitter Easy to apply to arm Possibility of needing re- applications Needs to be researched more

9. Motor Advantages/Disadvantages Servo MotorsStepper Motors Constantly actuatedPosition stable Less torqueMore torque No position holding mode Easy position determination & holding

10. Microcontroller Requirements Must output appropriate voltage to drive stepper motor drivers Must have enough outputs to drive horizontal and vertical motors, as well as motors for Turntable project Must have an Ethernet-capable receiver/transmitter as well as a UART for connections to/from robotic arm and/or turntable Must be programmable to be interrupt-driven Possibility: PIC18F97J60 Memory Type Program Memory RAMI/O Pins Pin Count CPU Speed Digital Communications EthernetTimersOperation Voltage Flash128 kB38087010042 MHz2 USART 2 MSSP 10Base-T2 x 8-bit 3 x 16-bit 2V – 3.6V

11. Tentative Schedule

12. Tentative Schedule (cont.)