With regard to planar parallel manipulators, a general classification of singularities into three groups is given. The classification scheme relies on the properties of instantaneous centers of rotation. This method is very fast and can easily be applied to the manipulators under study. The method is applied to a planar three-degrees-of-freedom parallel manipulator and all its singular configur...

The well-known inverse kinematics problem of six-degree-of-freedom serial manipulators has been solved with several approaches, but no attention has been given to provide an explicit solution involving the generality of industrial manipulators architecture. With the aim of embracing a large spectrum of industrial manipulators in a unified platform, an anthropomorphic classification is introduce...

TThe uncertainty estimation and compensation are challenging problems for the robust control of robot manipulators which are complex systems. This paper presents a novel decentralized model-free robust controller for electrically driven robot manipulators. As a novelty, the proposed controller employs a simple Gaussian Radial-Basis-Function Network as an uncertainty estimator. The proposed netw...

Parallel manipulators have the advantage of high speed and high precision in the theory of mechanisms. This has opened up broad possibilities for the use of parallel manipulators in many fields. But in real applications, due to the inevitable manufacturing tolerances and assembling errors, the actual kinematic parameters of parallel manipulators are always unequal to the nominal values and cali...

This article investigates the forward kinematics problem formulation and resolution specifically applied to spatial parallel manipulators which allow only for translationnal displacements of the end-effector. The translation manipulator is usually constituted of three to six kinematics chains with three actuators usually located on the base. These mechanisms are designed to prevent any rotation...

This paper presents a perturbation method for the dynamic simulation of flexible manipulators. In this method the vibrational motion of the manipulator is modeled as a first-order perturbation of the nominal rigid link motion. For that purpose the flexible dynamic model is split into two parts. A rigidified system describes the nominal rigid link motion of the manipulator. A linear system linea...

Position analysis is an essential step in the design, analysis and control of robots. In this article, a basic introduction to the position analysis of serial manipulators is given. This topic is invariably covered in all the textbooks on this subject. Therefore, instead of repeating the standard details of forward kinematics, such as, the designation of the reference frames, determination of t...

Service robots can be thought of as having two types of motion: (a) locomotion of the entire robot, which can be either legged or wheeled, and (b) motion of the manipulator limbs, e.g., object manipulation by the “hands” etc. While the first type is very specialised, in particular in the case of legged motion, the second is fairly generic and can be discussed in detail without making a very hea...