Applications of the Geometric Design of Mechanical Linkages With Task Acceleration Specifications

This paper formulates the kinematic specification of the synthesis problem for planar and spatial open serial chains in which the acceleration of the end-effector is specified. While the planar RR synthesis has been reported by the authors in some of their previous work, the synthesis of the spatial perpendicular RRS mechanical linkage with prescribed acceleration task is described in details in this paper and is a new contribution. Applications of this research focus on the design of planar RR and four-bar linkages to maintain specified local motion. In extending the research to spatial applications, a new strategy for failure recovery of a general six degree of freedom TRS robot arm is presented. It combines the second order effects of the task with the particular joint failure to yield free parameters that allow reconfiguration of the system to accommodate the failure.