I have long hankered after making a mobile robot arm, and controlling it
from my Mac.
I have now done it, and it works.

If you're interested, here goes.

The Arm is fully-featured, with control over : movement, waist rotation,
waist bend, shoulder bend, wrist bend, and a gripper. Each of these can be
discretely controlled from a Mac, from an FB program I've written especially
for the task. It communicates with the Arm via a 9600 baud RS232 interface.
The program not only controls Arm movement, but allows you to store arm
positions, and then sequence the stored locations to perform repetitive
actions.

The program has windows for controlling the arm, storing sequences, and two
2-D graphics displays of the Arm location. I'll probably turn these last two
into one 3-D rotatable graphics window when I have time. 2002, probably.

If anyone on this list has an interest in the project, please EMail me. If
there's enough interest, I'll document the project on my web site, with
images.

Phil Yates
pyates@...
http://www.hawk.ndirect.co.uk