Optimal Placement and Kinematic Design of 2-DoF Robotic Arm

For the effective management of robotized sites during the design phase of robot manipulator design in industrial and automation projects, specialized tools based on simulation of robotized sites are required which aims to provide aid to the user, e.g. the optimum robot trajectory to accomplish a specific task for a better cost as well as time management. In this work, we propose a general approach based on Matlab simulation to simulate collision-free optimal positioning & manipulation of robot's task by considering the effect of workspace & workshop grid size, link length, maximum joint angle limits, robot base radius, and obstacles size, location, and clearance. The proposed simulation strategy can be directly mapped to a real robot and able to cope with almost all problems related to the real implementation of manipulators. This approach deals with the optimal placement and kinematic design of a 2-DOF robotic arm using dynamic performance indices and angular constraints within and amongst links. The two degrees of freedom depict two rotations of the two movable links and no translational motion (z-direction) is considered. The mathematical modeling of the 2-DOF manipulator is briefly discussed and kinematics equations are derived using an inverse kinematics approach with an emphasis on developing an optimal 2-DOF robot for use in precision assembly applications. This configuration consists of direct drive planar linear motors traveling on a tabletop platen surface combined with an overhead 2-DOF manipulator.