Robot Arm Components: Part II: The Control Systems

     Today, I'd like to go over the part of the robot that controls it: the computer. the computer's job is to take in signals from the computer, then interpret those signals and send commands to the various parts of the arm. These signals are in the form of a widely used code: ASCII(American Standard Code for Information Interchange). The purpose of ASCII is simple, in that computers only understand numbers, so ASCII is a way to use numbers to represent actions or characters that aren't numbers. For example, every single button on a keyboard has an ASCII number applied to it.

An ASCII table

So, when you type in a command on a computer, the computer converts it from ASCII to a binary value, which the computer in the robot then accepts, and sends it in the form of electric pulses to the necessary part of the arm.