MOBILITY ANALYSIS OF SINGLE-LOOP KINEMATIC CHAINS - AN ALGORITHMIC APPROACH BASED ON DISPLACEMENT GROUPS

This paper presents a systematic approach to computing the mobility pr operties of single-loop kinematic chains. Such properties are defined by: the connectivity between any two links in a chain, the displacemen t group of their relative motion and the invariant properties of this group. Explicit rules and procedures for analyzing open and closed cha ins are fully described. The proposed approach does not require the kn owledge of one closure of the links in the chain, nor the values of th e pair variables of the chain. Several examples are given.