Kinematic design of five-bar parallel robot by kinematically defined performance index for energy consumption

Abstract

Evaluating parallel robots’ performance is a key to achieve a better design and better understanding of their behavior in operation. In this study, a novel idea of local performance evaluation of robots taking into consideration the directional variation of performance was proposed by introducing a circular trajectory around a local output point. Total displacement of joints was also introduced as a representative kinematically-defined performance index for energy consumption of robots. The proposed index was applied to performance evaluation of five-bar parallel robots and its effectiveness was investigated based on the relationship between its value and the consumed energy obtained by dynamic simulation. Illustrative example of kinematic design of five-bar parallel robot based on the proposed index was presented and its effectiveness was performed by evaluating the energy consumption of the designed robot to achieve pick-and-place motions.