KAUDA is a low-cost, highly-efficient robotic arm

Would you like your own industrial robot arm, but don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend? You could instead build Giovanni Lerda’s KAUDA, a five-axis device that uses under 800g of PLA, an Arduino Mega, and other off-the-shelf parts.

KAUDA utilizes servos to actuate the two wrist joints, along with a NEMA 17 motor for the elbow. A single stepper rotates the base in the horizontal direction, while dual steppers provide lifting force at this joint.

The gripper is a three-fingered linkage assembly, controlled by a small DC motor. The arm’s construction is outlined on its official website, and instructions can be found in Lerda’s write-up here. As seen in the video below, KAUDA looks great and appears to work quite well!