DESIGN PHILOSOPHY OF AN ISOTROPIC 6-AXIS SERIAL MANIPULATOR

Presented in this paper is the design philosophy employed for the cons truction of DIESTRO, an isotropic, six-axis, serial manipulator. The k inematic criteria applied so far in manipulator design have been based largely on kinematic solvability, in the sense of allowing for closed -form inverse kinematic solutions. As opposed to this rather limiting criterion, DIESTRO was designed kinematically so as to having a set of configurations in which its Jacobian matrix allows its inversion with out roundoff error amplification. Although the basic kinematic chain i s of the serial type, this design criterion led to an architecture not admitting closed-form inverse kinematic solutions. The central task w as to produce an accurate robot under the prescribed specifications. I t is believed that, under similar workspace and load specifications, t he particularly challenging design of many other serial manipulators w ith complex architectures can benefit from the design guidelines given here.