Design and development of planar reconfigurable motion generators

ABSTRACT

This article presents the concept of a new class of mechanical devices for multi-phase motion generation tasks. Reconfigurable Motion Generators are a new class of mechanical devices that are designed for a specific part family and their associated motion generation tasks. The research endeavors to realize a novel concept for Reconfigurable Motion Generators (RMGs) for multi-phase planar motion generation. Reconfigurable Motion Generators are capable of configuration changes according to variations in the motion generation requirements. Thus, Reconfigurable Motion Generators bridge the gap between the relative high flexibility and high cost of totally flexible devices (e.g., industrial robots) and the low flexibility and low cost of fully dedicated devices (e.g., cams and linkages). This paper introduces the concept of Reconfigurable Motion Generators that may be deployed in various automated manufacturing environments involving multi-phase motion generation tasks. The development, manufacturing, and testing of a prototype and the control system for a planar Reconfigurable Motion Generator based on a five-bar mechanism are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Design for motion generation
• design of planar linkages
• kinematics of machines
• kinematic synthesis/optimization
• planar mechanism design
• reconfigurable mechanisms
• robotics/machine control

Acknowledgements

The contributions of John Mills, Bastian Standfest, and Benedikt Hottner to the manufacture and testing of the planar RMG prototype are gratefully acknowledged. The material presented here is based upon preliminary work reported in Larochelle and Venkataramanujam (2013), Venkataramanujam and Larochelle (2014), and Venkataramanujam (2014).