Section: New Results

Appropriate design of kinematic chains

The goal of this research is to develop efficient and reliable tools based on the appropriate design framework using interval analysis that are capable of handling variations and uncertainties for the analysis and synthesis of serial kinematics chains. A primary application for this tool is to accurately model the true workspaces of the redundant human arm by imposing realistic joint constraints that may be obtained experimentally. The appropriate design framework makes it possible to model variations and uncertainties in the kinematics chains to describe families of mechanisms (e.g., sets of arms) and to understand the performance of the family. Through studying a person's usage of their available workspace on a given task, it is theorized that a task expert will make greater use of their available workspace to minimize the risk of fatigue, while a task amateur will confine themselves to a smaller region of their available workspace which will result in expedited fatigue. By understanding the range of motions of a family of task experts, collaborative robotics can be effectively incorporated to assist with the task. A C++ software library, titled the Kinematic Chain Appropriate Design Library, is being developed to efficiently model serial kinematics chains, where the main difficulty is to properly formulate the kinematic equations and incorporate additional constraints so that the problem can be quickly solved using interval analysis methods. The library will be capable of completely solving the forward and inverse kinematics problems, generating certified descriptions of various workspaces, and synthesizing appropriate design solutions.