This paper presents an application of Continuum (i.e. Lagrangian) and Finite Element Techniques to flexible manipulator arms for derivation of the corresponding Dynamic Equations of Motion. Specifically a one-link flexible arm is considered for detailed analysis, and the results are extended for the case of a two - link flexible manipulator. Numerical examples are given for the case of both one...

A space manipulator plays an important role in spacecraft capturing, repairing, maintenance, and so on. However, the harsh space environment will cause its joints fail to work. For a non-redundant manipulator, single joint locked failure will cause it to lose one degree of freedom (DOF), hence reducing its movement ability. In this paper, the key problems related to the fault-tolerant including...

This paper presents a decentralized control strategy for mobile manipulator systems. First, the whole system of mobile manipulator is divided into two interconnected subsystems: nonholonomic mobile platform subsystem and holonomic manipulator subsystem. Second, a kinematic and dynamic controllers are developed for mobile platform subsystem. The kinematic control provides the desired velocity th...

Current design proposals of space manipulator systems use a relatively small dextrous manipulator attached to the end of a long flexible manipulator or supporting structure to perform a variety of tasks. Such a configuration presents a number of control problems due to the dynamic interaction between the components of the systems. Principally, the motion of the small manipulator can excite diff...

In experimental robotics, researchers may face uncertainties in parameters of a robot manipulator that they are working with. This uncertainty may be caused by deviations in the manufacturing process of a manipulator, or changes applied to manipulator in the lab for sake of experiments. Another situation when dynamical and inertial parameters of a robot are uncertain arises, is the grasping of ...

Trajectory of an under-actuated manipulator is usually generated according to both kinematics and dynamics of the manipulator, different to that of conventional manipulator. For this reason, another important problem in trajectory generation for the real system of an under-actuated manipulator is the realizablity of trajectory. That is, the real trajectory by real system may differ greatly from...

This paper concerns the presentation and analysis of a type of three translational degrees of freedom (DoFs) parallel cube-manipulator. The parallel manipulators are the topology architectures of the DELTA robot and Tsai’s manipulator, respectively, which have three translational DoFs. In the design, the three actuators are arranged according to the Cartesian coordinate system, which means that...

In this paper, a method is proposed to analytically determine the "uncertain" configurations of a general 6R manipulator. A configuration is called uncertain if in that configuration the manipulator’s joint freedom is greater than its end-effector freedom. In uncertain configurations, the manipulator acts like a redundant system where the endeffector remains in the same pose even if one (or mor...

In the last several years, mobile manipulators have been increasingly utilized and developed from a theoretical viewpoint as well as for practical applications in space, underwater, construction and service environments. The work presented in this chapter deals with the problem of intelligent behaviour modelling and control of a mobile manipulator for the purpose of simultaneously following des...

A rapidly deployable manipulator system combines the flexibility of reconfigurable modular hardware with modular programming tools, allowing the user to rapidly create a manipulator which is custom-tailored for a given task. This article describes two main aspects of such a system, namely, the Reconfigurable Modular Manipulator System (RMMS) hardware and the corresponding control