Identifying the Independent Inertial Parameter Space of Robot Manipulators

This paper presents a new approach to the problem of finding the minimum number of inertial parameters of robot manipulator dynamic equations of motion. Based upon the energy difference equation, it is equally applicable to serial link manipulators as well as graph structured manipulators. The method is conceptually simple, computationally efficient, and easy to implement. In particular, the manipulator kinematics and the joint positions and velocities are the only inputs to the algorithm. Applications to a serial link and a graph structured manipulator are illustrated.