In this article. rhe approach developed by the authors for systematicallv studving rhe acceleration capabiliry and properties of rhe end effector of a planar manipulator is extended to the general. serial, spatial manipulator possessing three degrees of freedom. The acceleration of the end effector at a given configuration of the manipulator is a linearfunction of the actuator rorques and a (no...

Gravity balancing is often used in industrial machines to decrease the required actuator efforts during motion. In the literature, a number of methods have been proposed for gravity balancing that include counterweights, springs, and auxiliary parallelograms that determine the center of mass. This paper describes the underlying theory of gravity balanced spatial robotic manipulators through a h...

A Space Free-Flying Robot (SFFR) includes an actuated base equipped with one or more manipulators to perform on-orbit missions. Distinct from fixed-based manipulators, the spacecraft (base) of a SFFR responds to dynamic reaction forces due to manipulator motions. In order to control such a system, it is essential to consider the dynamic coupling between the manipulators and the base. Explicit d...