Smart Actuator Positioning and Displacement Transmissibility in Serial and Parallel Robot Manipulators for Performance Enhancement

A method is presented for the evaluation of the transmissibility of displacement from smart (active) actuators integrated in the structure of robot manipulators to the manipulator joint and end-effector displacements. The method is based on studying the characteristics of the Jacobian of the mapping function between the two displacements for a given position of the robot manipulator. The developed method provides a tool for the determination of the positioning of smart actuators to provide maximum effectiveness in eliminating high harmonics of the joint or the end-effector motion. In robots with serial and parallel kinematics chains containing nonprismatic joints, due to the associated kinematics nonlinearity, if the joint motions were synthesized with low harmonic trajectories, the end-effector trajectory would still contain high harmonics of the joint motions. Alternatively, if the end-effector motion were synthesized with low harmonic components, due to the inverse kinematics nonlinearity, the actuated joint trajectories would contain a significant high harmonic component. As a result, the operating speed and tracking precision are degraded. By integrating smart materials based actuators in the structure of robot manipulators to provide small amplitude and high frequency motions, the high harmonic component of the actuated joint and/or the end-effector motions can be significantly reduced, thereby making it possible to achieve higher operating speed and tracking precision.