Acceleration sets of planar manipulators

Abstract: "The acceleration set theory developed in the companion report is applied to two important problems which arise in the design of manipulator systems for performance: manipulator type selection and actuator size determination. A systematic procedure is given for the comparison of the performance, based on acceleration, of a set of alternative manipulator types. This procedure is then used to compare the performance of three well-known manipulator designs which have been proposed for high performance. Simple algorithms, based on the acceleration set theory, are given for the determination of the minimum actuator sizes to obtain a specified isotropic acceleration. The ease of implementation of these algorithms is demonstrated by actual examples. The experimental determination of acceleration sets is also addressed and simple experimental results are presented and compared with those predicted by the theory."