Identification of placement parameters for modular platform manipulators

When the six legs of a platform manipulator are individually installed to a new base or different locations of the installation site, the true values of the position and orientation of base joints may not be precisely known t o the controller of the manipulator and often inconvenient to be measured d irectly. In this article, a method to identify position and orientation of base joints for modular platform manipulators is described. Through the mea surement of the mobile plate pose, orientation change of base joints, and t he leg length increment of prismatic joints leads to a set of nonlinear equ ations for the identification problem. Methods for solving the identificati on equations are discussed. The method of dialytic elimination using symbol ic manipulation is presented for a special situation. The identification pr ocess is illustrated with an example. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.