Design of an active reconfigurable 2R joint

Abstract

The increasing flexibility requirements in the manufacturing processes has led to the development of novel reconfigurable mechanisms to be implemented in machine heads and tables. This is the case of the reconfigurable parallel manipulators which are also used in a wide variety of applications. These mechanisms include often in their kinematic chains active or reconfigurable joints. In this paper, a 2R active reconfigurable joint is presented. As well as carrying out the kinematic characterization of the joint, a demonstrative prototype has been also built.

Design and Testing of Two Haptic Devices Based on Reconfigurable 2R Joints

“…In this paper, two reconfigurable joint designs are considered: an active 2R spherical mechanism-based joint (see Figure 1a) and a differential gear-based design (see Figure 1b). The complete kinematic analysis, workspace characterization and finite element analysis (FEA) of the active 2R spherical mechanism-based joint can be found in previous works [3,28]. The kinematic analysis and quasi-static analysis of the differential gear-based joint can be found in a previous study [29].…”

“…A haptic device is an instrument that is used to perform different kinds of manipulations with objects, providing the operator with feedback, i.e., tactile feedback, vibrational feedback, force feedback, etc. The application of haptic devices varies from handling virtual three-dimensional (3D) bodies [1,2] to device remote control [3][4][5] and surgery [6,7]. Different types of feedback can be used to indicate the interaction with the controlled object.…”

An Active/Passive Joint for Reconfiguration Applications

“…The proposed joint represents an evolution of a previous design shown in Fig. 2 [11], which was based in the concept of the spherical five bar linkage. This previous design had several drawbacks.…”