Development of environmental awareness for the Kuka robot arm

The Murab (MRI and Ultrasound Robotic Assisted Biopsy) project mainly aims at improving the precision of medical imaging by combining the results of MRI and US with the aid of robotic precision. The project enhances the process of screening and testing of breast cancer, not only with regard to precision, but also time consumption. This bachelor project is primarily related to the topic of safety regarding Murab. The main focus is to detect obstacles in the robot arm’s environment and use an obstacle avoidance algorithm to avoid them. Xbox 360 Kinect depth sensor is used to get position information of objects in 3D space. Kuka LBR iiwa 14 R820 robot arm is to be controlled through a PC using a pre-built library. Both the sensor and the manipulator are integrated on ROS(C++). The designed system is tested and the results are analysed to evaluate its reliability.