We are Freshman Virginia Tech Students participating in our first hackathon. The aim of this project is to apply concepts of forward kinematic analysis to work out the positions and orientations of the joints of a robotic arm in Denavit-Hartenberg convention. To this end, we created a simulated 3D environment with a 3 DOF robotic arm. Our application features a GUI that allows users to enter angles for each joint on the robot arm. Alternatively, users can use keyboard input to control each joint.

We built our 3D environment with java using libgdx. We modeled the arm using Autodesk Fusion 360.

Most of us were new to creating a GUI within libgdx, so we found it challenging to set that up within our project. Additionally, the concepts of forward kinematics were very new to us, and it was challenging for us to implement.

We learned how to work with libgdx and how to apply knowledge of inverse kinematics to a simulated robotic arm.

[W] - Move camera forward
[D] - Pan camera to the right
[A] - Pan camera to the left
[S] - Move camera back

[I] - Moves the second joint forward
[K] - Moves the second joint backwards
[M] - Twists the hand to the left
[N] - Twists the hand to the right

[UP] - Moves the first joint up
[DOWN] - Moves the down
[RIGHT] - Moves the first joint to the right
[LEFT] - Moves the first join to the left