A dexterity measure for robot manipulators

Abstract

A dexterity measure is presented which can be used for the design evaluation of robot (redundant) manipulators. The proposed criterion is applied (in an absolute fashion) to the evaluation of the kinematic dexterity of five different designs of a HERA redundant manipulator to be used in space operations. The selection of these designs is based on augmenting the original HERA six-degree-of-freedom design with an extra joint and considering only the resultant manipulators to be capable of avoiding all possible kinds of internal singularity. The results are in agreement with the conclusions from previous subjective studies conducted for the design analysis of an industrial arm as a redundant manipulator.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>