Kinematic Design of Serial Link Manipulators
From Task Specifications
Abstract:
The Reconfigurable Modular Manipulator System (RMMS) consists of modular
links and joints which can be assembled into many manipulator
configurations. This capability allows the RMMS to be rapidly reconfigured
in order to custom tailor it to specific tasks. An important issue, related
to the RMMS, is the determination of the optimal manipulator configuration
for a specific task. In this paper, we address the problem of mapping
kinematic task specifications into a kinematic manipulator
configuration. For the design of 2 degrees-of-freedom (DOF) planar
manipulators, an analytical solution is derived. Since for problems
with more than 2 design parameters analytical solutions become impractical,
we have also developed a numerical approach for the design of 6-DOF
manipulators. The numerical procedure determines the Denavit-Hartenberg
(D-H) parameters of a non-redundant manipulator with joint limits, that can
reach a set of specified positions/orientations in an environment that may
include parallelepiped-shaped obstacles. Finally, this approach is
demonstrated with a 3-dimensional example for a 6-DOF manipulator.
The International Journal of Robotics Research ,
Vol. 12, No.3, pp. 274-287, June 1993.
paredis@cmu.edu