Dynamic Manipulability of Robot Manipulators

Abstract

The concept of dynamic manipulability of robot arms is proposed as a quantitative measure of their manipulating ability in positioning and orienting the end-effectors, which takes the arm dynamics into consideration. It is shown that this measure corresponds to the volume of the dynamic manipulability ellipsoid, which is formed by the set of all realizable acceleration of the endeffector under certain constraint on the magnitude of joint driving force. A two-joint link mechanism is analyzed and its best posture is obtained under certain condition from the viewpoint of this measure. A numerical example is also given to illustrate the applicability of this concept to the design of robot manipulators.