Dynamics and motion control of a two-link robot manipulator with a passive joint

Abstract

A robot manipulator with passive joints has the following features: a light weight manipulator can be fabricated by implementing simple hinge; and the manipulator is fault-tolerant to actuator failure by using frictional torque at the passive joint.. A motion control of a two-link robot manipulator actuated only at the second joint is presented in this paper. The first integral of the system is derived and the motion is described as a variation of the integral constant. Also, the dynamically enforced motion and free motion are analyzed based on the first integral approach proposed in this paper. An effective motion control algorithm is established using the dynamic characteristics positively. Finally a simple numerical example is given.