Structural synthesis of bevel-gear robotic wrist mechanisms

摘要

This paper presents an efficient methodology for the structural synthesis of bevel-gear robotic wrist mechanisms. First, a unified graph representation is introduced to represent the structure of bevel-gear wrist mechanisms. Next, the basic design requirements of bevel-gear wrist mechanisms are induced. Then, a method is developed such that three-degree-of-freedom (DOF) bevel-gear wrist mechanisms can be synthesized from the catalog of two-degree-of-freedom, nonfractionated geared kinematic chains. An approach is also proposed to sketch the functional representation of bevel-gear wrist mechanisms. As a result, a complete atlas of three-degree-of-freedom bevel-gear robotic wrist mechanisms with up to nine links is successfully constructed in a systematic way.