A methodology to determine the dynamic configuration of a reconfigurable manipulator

Abstract

Typical tasks involved in the factory shop-floor range from simple pick and place operations to complex systems used for seam welding and assembly. In order to improve the quality and through-put of a product, specialized robots are used whose configurations are appropriate for the particulate task. The Reconfigurable Modular Manipulator System (RMMS) consists of modular links and joints which can be assembled into many manipulator configurations. This capability allows the RMMS to be rapidly reconfigured in order to custom tailor it to specific tasks. In this paper we discuss the issues of determining manipulator configuration from task requirements. We first show that task requirements can be broadly classified into kinematic and dynamic requirements. We then use dynamic requirements, in particular, the bound on the joint velocities and accelerations to select appropriate joint modules. We present our algorithm to select joint modules using bounds on joint velocities and accelerations. We use these bounds and the knowledge of previous module selections to calculate the maximum joint torques required. The algorithm ensures that the selected joint modules will have sufficient torque ratings.