Method for Evaluating the Actuatibility of Manipulators

Abstract

This paper presents a new method for evaluating an input/output characteristic of a manipulator. The proposed method can clarify a required torque and velocity for a manipulator outputting isotropic force and velocity, translational and rotational components of which are evaluated independently. This study calls such a characteristic as actuatibility. Actuatibility can be easily evaluated by solving the eigenvalue problem of Jacobian which reveals the infinitesimal input/output relation of a manipulator. The evaluation of actuatibility will reveal an appropriate configuration of a manipulator, required specifications of actuators and so on, thereby bringing the improvement of various performances of a manipulator. This paper has especially clarified the actuatibility of an in-parallel actuated manipulator and compared the proposed method with the evaluation of manipulability which is a representative method evaluating of an input/output characteristic of a manipulator. As a result, it has been confirmed that the proposed method will be more practical for derermining the configuration, selecting the actuators of a manipulator and so on.