Mechanical design of an 3R2P Manipulator

Abstract

When one joint of a manipulator fails and is locked, the velocities of remaining joints will produce sudden change. The sudden change of joint velocity in fault tolerant operation of two coordinating manipulators for locked joint failures is studied. First, the difference between the joint velocity of original manipulator and that of reduced manipulator is defined as the sudden change in joint velocity. Then, a corresponding fault tolerant planning algorithm based on this index is proposed. At last, numerical and solid simulations of fault tolerant operations for two spatial 4R manipulators are implemented. Simulation results show that the sudden change greatly affects the motion stability of the manipulators during fault tolerant operations, and the algorithm proposed here can effectively minimize the sudden change, which will lead to a smoother operation and increased motion stability.