Assembly Configuration Synthesis Method for Discretely-Actuated Manipulators
Discretely-actuated manipulators are defined in this paper as serial planar chains of many links where the actuation of one link with respect to the previous link occurs in one of three discrete positions. Because of the limited end-effector workspace, a link may be manually connected to the previous link in one of four 90° orientations to assist in generating a workspace corresponding to specific applications. Given an application workspace, the assembly configuration synthesis strategy presented here is a novel approach to determine the nominal configuration (all actuators in their 0° position) of the serial chain. The solved configuration will cover an application grid area using its discrete actuation with no change in nominal configuration. The unique application workspace, defined as a planar grid area, requires the end effector to be positioned somewhere within each specific element of the grid. The synthesis strategy is made up of three stages with each stage having tests that increase in computation and difficulty that a potential configuration must pass or be eliminated. Critical to the tests is the ability to quickly model and approximate the end-effector workspace of a configuration and a new method for this approximation is described.