A novel inverse kinematics scheme for the design and fabrication of a five degree of freedom arm robot

In this paper, analysis and fabrication of a laboratory model of a five degree of freedom arm robot for pickup and drop applications along with the governing kinematics is investigated. SolidWorks and SimMechanics were applied as the design-fabrication and motion analysis softwares, respectively. To reduce the weight and power consumption and improve the manufacturing time, plexiglas was used as the fabrication material. A novel geometric approach for the inverse kinematics is proposed and as a consequence the addition of the orientation of the specimen along with the location of the end effector as the inputs of the inverse kinematics problem, resulted in the improved workspace and minimum computational error, which enhanced the robot efficiency. The proposed novel inverse kinematics scheme is based on the formulation of the end effector position in terms of the global coordinates and the geometry of the robot; and accordingly determining the join angles in terms of the governing parameters and the desired end effector position. The proposed method led to a considerable reduction of positioning error. In order to validate the simulation outputs, the corresponding results are compared to those of the laboratory model. © 2019, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.