Development of a vision-guided SCARA robot system based on a refurbished mechanical platform for automated pick-and-place applications

This study presents the development of a vision-guided 4-DOF SCARA robotic arm based on a refurbished mechanical platform for automated pick-and-place applications. The existing mechanical structure was retained, while a new electrical and control system was developed. The proposed system integrates motor control, point-to-point (PTP) motion control, and a human-machine interface (HMI) for robot operation and monitoring. A machine vision module was also integrated to detect objects and determine their positions, enabling automatic pick-and-place operations. The developed system coordinates image-based object localization with robot motion commands. Experimental tests were conducted to evaluate the positioning and image-based coordinate calculation performance of the system. The average robot positioning errors were 0.81 mm along the X-axis and 0.51 mm along the Y-axis. The results demonstrate the feasibility of reusing an obsolete SCARA mechanical platform to develop an integrated and functional robotic system for automated pick-and-place applications.