Big Robots, Small Tasks – Task Scale Reduction Using a Simple Pantograph Mechanism
PUBLICATION DATE: 12 December, 2025 PUBLICATION AUTHOR/S: Sean Burgess, Braydon Pithie & Jonathan RobertsImproved accuracy for collaborative robots is important for small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to expand efficiency and manufacturing capability. These SMEs are often limited to larger robotic arms for various tasks, and require higher precision to enable these arms to perform micro-manipulation tasks. This paper presents a proof-of-concept investigation into applying a traditional mechanical linkage, called a pantograph, to passively reduce the scale of robotic arms, while maintaining accuracy through computer vision and visual servoing. A UFACTORY xArm 7 robotic arm was combined with a custom-built pantograph and a small USB camera to test the passive scale reduction of a 2-dimensional image. The results showed that a pantograph system can accurately draw small-scale squares more effectively than a robotic arm directly drawing the same images. Future work will explore the extension of this approach with a third axis, refined visual servoing, and learning based methods to further assess the potential of passive motion scaling.
RELATED PROGRAM/S:Biomimic Cobots Program Postdoctoral Researcher based at UTS Publication link
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