Analysis of the Acceleration Characteristics of Non-Redundant Manipulators

The study of the acceleration properties at the end eeector is important in the analysis, design, and control of robot manipulators. In previous eeorts aimed at addressing this problem, the end-eeector acceleration has been treated as a vector combining both the linear and angular accelerations. The methodology presented in this article provides characterizations of these two diierent types of accelerations and describes the relationship between them. This work is an extension of our previous studies on manipulator inertial and acceleration properties. The treatment relies on the ellipsoid expansion model, a simple geometric approach to ee-ciently analyze end-eeector accelerations. Results of the application of this analysis to the PUMA 560 ma-nipulator are discussed.