Passive compliance of flexible link robots. I. A new computation method

The compliance of a robot is an important factor in many robotic tasks which require force in either measurement or control in addition to position control. The compliance of a robot is usually described by the compliance matrix at its end-effector. In this paper, we present a novel framework for computing the end-effector compliance from the compliance offered by the limbs of a serial robot. The new method is computationally more efficient but not less accurate than the existing finite element method. The computational efficiency of the method arises from the fact that external forces are experienced by the end-effector alone and that there are no other external forces applied to the internal limbs. As an approximation computation, this method is also applicable to robots with very flexible links.