Design of cooperating spherical RPR robots

Abstract

This paper uses the kinematic mapping into the image space of spherical displacements to design a cooperating spherical robot system for workpiece orientating. The kinematic chain formed by the cooperating robots grasping the workpiece forms a multi degree of freedom closed chain which is also known as a robotic mechanism. The spherical robots considered are spherical RPR open chains and they rigidly grasp the workpiece to form a 9 degree of freedom closed chain. The design problem considered is to determine the base locations and grasp points that enable the cooperating robots to guide a workpiece, through an arbitrary number of desired orientations. An example of the design of a cooperating spherical RPR robot system for six (6) desired orientations is presented.