Kinematic study and trajectory tracking of a five-DOF spatial manipulator

Abstract

With the development in technology, more and more automation systems and robotic manipulators are used in place of the conventional machines. These systems and robots are having complex shapes and structures. In the past many methods like D-H parameter method, S-U notation method etc. have been used for the kinematic analysis of such robotic manipulators. The scope of this thesis is limited to kinematic study and trajectory tracking of the spatial manipulators. It has been found in the literature that the pioneer work done by Denavit and Hartenberg to develop the kinematic model of a serial manipulator, has its own limitations. A couple of ambiguities are reported by different researchers in the past. In this thesis, an ambiguity of D-H parameter is observed. For complex and spatial structure, conventional methods like D-H are not able to develop the kinematic models. A spatial robot having five degree of freedom is discussed and ambiguities of D-H parameter method are highlighted. Improvements have been made to the existing D-H method, by using concept of Dummy Frames. These dummy frames remove the positional and orientational inconsistency in the kinematic study of Spatial Manipulator. Trajectory tracking of the spatial robotic manipulator is done using a software named SimWise 4D.