Type Synthesis and Workspace Analysis of a Novel Series Chinese Medical Massage Arm

Abstract

Based on the Chinese medical massage manipulation of rolling, pressing, kneading and pushing, the serial mechanical arm with six rotational joints and the end actuator with 3-DOF parallel mechanism are selected, and a new type of hybrid massage robot is proposed. The type synthesis of this massage arm is designed from two aspects, the arm and the wrist. 6R serial joint massage arm is adopted. Using Denavit-Hartenberg coordinate system, the kinematics model of this massage robot is established and the direct kinematic problem is solved by homogeneous coordinate transformation. The workspace of this Chinese medical massage arm is analyzed by the graphical approach. It shows that the length of upper arm and forearm of this kind of Chinese medical massage arm should be equal to make the work section largest. The workspace of this Chinese medical massage arm is also portrayed based on the Monte Carlo principle through programming on MATLAB. It indicates that the working points in the workspace of the manipulator are distributed compactly and uniformly, which can satisfy the Chinese medical massage requirements with high efficiency.