A Preliminary Step for Path Tracking of Coordinated Robot Arms Based on Kinematics

Abstract

This work concerns the kinematics of two collaborating robot arms handling an object. Such a task is much more difficult, both kinematically and dynamically, than when only one robot arm is involved, in view of the fact that (1) the two end ef fectors must always remain in their respective workspace and (2) the mutual forces from the two arms must contribute to giv ing the object held the required motion. One case in material handling with two arms is when the orientation of the object is not of importance in transition. In this sense, if a task becomes impossible to continue because of the inaccessibility of the required position and orientation by the end effector, it might be possible to overcome the difficulty by performing the nec essary orientation adjustments at each instant during motion. As a preliminary step toward this goal, this problem is stud ied for one robot arm and is presented with some illustration examples.