A Kinematic Analysis of a Binary Robot Manipulator using Genetic Algorithms

Abstract

A binary parallel robot manipulator uses actuators that have only two stable states being built by stacking variable geometry trusses on top of each other in a long serial chain. Discrete characteristics of the binary manipulator make it impossible to analyze an inverse kinematic problem in conventional ways. We therefore introduce new definitions of workspace and inverse kinematic solution, and then apply a genetic algorithm to the newly defined inverse kinematic problem. Numerical examples show that our genetic algorithm is very efficient to solve the inverse kinematic problem of binary robot manipulators.