Development And Application Of A Fault Tolerance Measure For Serial And Parallel Robotic Structures

Abstract

As fault-tolerant systems develop, higher levels of reliability in robotics become achievable. With greater levels of fault tolerance and higher accessibility of robots in general, fault-tolerant characteristics of robotic systems will have to be distinguished. This paper develops and utilizes a fault-tolerant capacity measure to rank serial and parallel robotic architectures according to their inherent fault-tolerant capabilities. Four levels of fault-tolerant robotic architectures are distinguished at the joint, link, subsystem, and system levels. Robotic systems ranging from the most basic to the more complicated architectures are evaluated using the measure to provide a basis for comparison of their fault tolerance capabilities. The measure presents a tool for the designer to guide the robotic architecture and component selection process.