Get A Grip On Robotics

Arm

For a machine to qualify as a robot, it usually needs these 5 parts:

Controller
Arm
Drive
End Effector
Sensor

ARM - Robot arms come in all shapes and sizes. The arm is the part of the robot that positions the end-effector and sensors to do their pre-programmed business.

Many (but not all) resemble human arms, and have shoulders, elbows, wrists, even fingers. This gives the robot a lot of ways to position itself in its environment. Each joint is said to give the robot 1 degree of freedom.

So, a simple robot arm with 3 degrees of freedom could move in 3 ways: up and down, left and right, forward and backward. Most working robots today have 6 degrees of freedom.