7-DOF horseback riding simulator based on a crank mechanism with variable radius and its inverse kinematics solution

Abstract

This paper proposes a robotic simulator for horseback riding that incorporates a crank mechanism with a variable radius. In horseback riding simulations, it is necessary to efficiently generate vertical sinusoid motion. A novel crank mechanism is proposed to change the unidirectional rotation of a motor to sinusoid wave motion with an arbitrary magnitude and frequency. On the basis of the results of a kinematic analysis, the singularity and redundancy issues of the system are presented. To avoid the singularity problem, an inverse kinematics solution is presented and the result of the simulation shows stable solution of the inverse kinematics.