A geometric method for determining joint rotations in spatial mechanisms

摘要

An iterative procedure has been developed where the rotational displacements of a spatial mechanism are determined by a geometric method. The technique mimics the way a person would determine the rotations by making a trial assembly of the links of the mechanism and then adjusting the displacements so that links close up to form a loop. The procedure has been found to be practical and can be applied to complicated spatial mechanisms for which the mathematics are overly involved, and is particularly useful for situations when a good initial guess adequate for a successful Newton-Raphson solution is unavailable.