Kinetostatics of Serial Robots

Abstract

Kinetostatics is understood here as the study of the interplay between the feasible twists of and the constraint wrenches acting on the various rigid bodies of a mechanical system, when the system moves under static, conservative conditions. The feasible twists of the various rigid bodies, or links, are those allowed by the constraints imposed by the robot joints. The constraint wrenches are, in turn, the reaction forces and moments exerted on a link by the links to which that link is coupled by means of joints. The subject of this chapter is the kinetostatics of serial robots, with focus on six-axis manipulators. By virtue of the duality between the kinematic and the static relations in the mechanics of rigid bodies, as outlined in Section 3.7, the derivation of the kinematic relations is discussed in detail, the static relations following from the former.