
52 Make: Robotic Arms
cos, tan, and their inverses. You can also find calculators online.) Once you
plug our equation into your calculator of choice, you’ll see the answer:
arctan(120/120) = 0.7853981634
This answer is in a format you may not be used to—a unit of measurements
we call a radian, which is different than a degree. Radians, another way to
express an angle, are actually a much more common format than degrees
for expressing angles in robotics. Technically, a radian is based on the arc
length of a circle and that circle's radius, unlike degrees, which are based
on triangles. Thankfully, converting from one to the other is really easy ...