MOBILITY CRITERIA OF PLANAR SINGLE-LOOP N-BAR CHAINS WITH PRISMATIC JOINTS

摘要

The paper offers an extension of Ting's rotatability laws to N-bar chains connected by revolute and prismatic joints. The extension is based on the principle that a prismatic joint may be regarded as a revolute joint located at infinity in the direction normal to the path of the slider. The extension provides a consistent method to understand all aspects of linkage rotatability disregarding the existence of prismatic joints. The simplicity and consistency of its applications is demonstrated with examples.