Evaluation of the dynamic performance variation of a serial manipulator after eliminating the self-weight influence

Manipulators used in the industrial field usually have a very stiff structure but without an equivalent payload on their end-effectors. This is because the stiff structure is used to prevent excessive deformation which will negatively impact the positioning accuracy of the manipulator, especially when the manipulator is fully extended. However, the stiff structure increases the weight of the manipulator and consumes much of the output of the constituent joint actuators in order to overcome the gravitational force resulting from the heavy structure. To cope with this problem, the concept of gravity balance was proposed decades ago, and there have been several approaches suggested to eliminate the influence of the self-weight of the structure. With the help of gravity balance, the output of the constituent joint actuators can fully be used to drive the manipulator and save considerable energy when the manipulator is in static or low-speed applications. For decades, many papers have discussed how to make a manipulator in gravity balance or how to design and apply a gravity balance mechanism to satisfy a certain application. However, none of them discuss what the influence on the dynamic performance of a manipulator is after it is equipped with a gravity balance mechanism or how to evaluate that influence. To rectify this insufficiency, this article utilizes acceleration radius to be the index of measuring the dynamic performance before and after a manipulator is equipped with a gravity balance mechanism and proposes a new index, the maneuverability ratio, to provide quantitative information to measure whether the dynamic performance of the manipulator increases or not after the gravity balance mechanism is applied. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.