A Unified Algorithm for Analysis and Simulation of Planar Four-Bar Motions Defined With R- and P-Joints

This paper presents a single, unified and efficient algorithm for animating the motions of the coupler of all four-bar mechanisms formed with revolute (R) and prismatic (P) joints. This is achieved without having to formulate and solve the loop closure equation associated with each type of four-bar linkages separately. In our previous paper on four-bar linkage synthesis, we map the planar displacements from Cartesian to image space using planar quaternion. Given a set of image points that represent planar displacements, the problem of synthesizing a planar four-bar linkage is reduced to finding a pencil of Generalized- or G-manifolds that best fit the image points in the least squares sense. The three planar dyads associated with Generalized G-manifolds are RR, PR and RP which could construct six types of four-bar mechanisms. In this paper, we show that the same unified formulation for linkage synthesis leads to a unified algorithm for linkage analysis and simulation as well. Both the unified synthesis and analysis algorithms have been implemented on Apple’s iOS platform.