Jaco Robotic Arm - ROS/Unity Simulation

Jaco Robotic Arm – Pick & Place with Computer Vision 🤖

Internship Project @ Athena RC
We (in collaboration with Giannakopoulou Lamprini) developed a simulation pipeline for a Kinova Jaco 6‑DOF robotic arm, integrating Unity and ROS with computer vision to perform real-world tasks like leaf disease detection and garbage sorting.

🎯 What We Did

• Unity + ROS Integration
  • Utilized Unity and ROS Noetic/Melodic to simulate and control the robotic arm
  • Employed Gazebo and RViz for physics-based motion planning
• Three Interactive Scenarios in Unity
  1. Basic Pick & Place – A simple demo to move objects using the robotic arm
  2. Leaf Disease Detection – Detects grape leaves with disease using a YOLOv4 model and sorts them accordingly
  3. Garbage Sorting – Uses object detection, SSD MobileNetV2, to classify and sort waste into categories: plastic, metal, paper, glass, unknown

🚀 Impact & Takeaways

This project demonstrates a complete pipeline for robotic perception and manipulation.

Key outcomes:

• Real-time computer vision in robotics
• Integration of Unity and ROS for simulation
• Real-world use cases: agriculture and sustainability

🎥 Demo Videos & Slides

• Leaf Disease Detection Video
• Garbage Sorting Simulation Video
• Garbage Sorting Real-Time Demo
• Project Slides

🖥️ Code

View on GitHub