Robotics Education and Research

When choosing a robot arm for robotics education and research, the selection criteria are size, precision, safety, cost-effectiveness, ease of use, and open architecture. Mecademic robots are unique in that they outperform competitive industrial and academic robots in nearly all these criteria. Discover what makes our robot arms ideal for robotics education and research.

Why choose Mecademic for robotics education and research?

Easily use our robots in advanced ways

Teach robotics without making your students learn complex robot programming languages and environments. Mecademic robots do not have a proprietary programming language and are easy to control. Simply use Ethernet to stream any of the motion and request commands described in our programming manual. The robots come with a web interface for jogging and program testing. You can control them with ROS, Python, Matlab, or C++ using some of the APIs that we offer, and even develop applications such as hand-guiding and fast visual servoing with our velocity control mode.

Commission up to a dozen precision robots without renovating your lab

Our industrial robot arms are by far the smallest, most compact, and most precise on the market. Their tiny size makes it easy to transport them in a carry-on case. Deploy them in minutes simply by plugging them into any standard wall outlet and any computer! Our robots are nearly noiseless, so be sure not to forget to power them off. Additionally, their precision and accuracy makes it possible to have them work in tandem.

Receive access to advanced pedagogical material

If you have ever searched for information on Euler angles or robot singularities, chances are you have come across our tutorials. Mecademic users will have advanced access to future in-depth pedagogical material, high-resolution images, and videos. Educators may use our tutorials to save time developing their course curriculums.

Avoid hidden costs and restrictions

Our industrial robots are not only affordable, they also don’t come with any hidden costs. There are no maintenance fees, no licenses to renew, and no training courses to take. Users receive free firmware updates and technical support. Additionally, most setups using our robots don’t require expensive or custom robot cells. You can build relatively complex but small installations with off-the-shelf precision components from Thorlabs or Vention.

Common Applications

Robotics higher education

Our robots are easy to operate and program, saving professors hours on explaining how to use them. Our robots are so small, compact, noiseless, and energy efficient, that professors and researchers can easily equip their robotics classrooms or labs with dozens at a time.

Medical robotics research

Thanks to its high accuracy, the Meca500 is often equipped with a needle and haptic device for use in surgical robotics research. In fact, micro-surgery was the first commercial application of the Meca500. In this application, cameras were used to calibrate the robot tool.

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Real-time path control

With their simple Cartesian and joint velocity commands, Mecademic robots can be controlled in velocity mode. Users can pair the robot with any position sensor (e.g., laser distance sensor or 3D tracking device) and follow a desired trajectory using their own control algorithms and a computer connected to both the sensor and the robot (see this example).

Hand-guiding

You can mount a force/torque sensor (or even the SpaceMouse module) on the flange of our Meca500. This enables professors and researchers to implement their own impedance control algorithm based on the use of our velocity mode.