Kinematics of Alternative Robotic Mechanical Systems

Abstract

The study of robotic mechanical systems has focused, so far, on serial manipulators. These are the most common systems of their kind, but nowadays by no means the majority. In recent years, other kinds of robotic mechanical systems have been developed, as outlined in Chap. 1. Under alternative robotic mechanical systems we understand here: (a) parallel robots; (b) multifingered hands; (c) walking machines; and (d) rolling robots. A class that is increasingly receiving attention, humanoids, portrays an architecture inspired from the human musculo-skeletal system. This class deserves a study on its own because of the host of control problems that it poses to the roboticist; its kinematics, however, can be studied with the tools developed in this chapter for the first three kinds of systems listed above. For this reason, a section on humanoids is not included here.