We formulate the kinematic equations-of-motion of wheeled mobile robots incorporating conuentionaI, omnidirectional, and ball wheels. While our approach parallels the kinematic modeling of stationary manipulators, we extend the methodology to accommodate such special characteristics of wheeled mobile robots as multiple closed-link chains, higher-pair contact points between a wheel and a surface...

This paper proposes a new closed-form solution for identifying the kinematic parameters of an active binocular head having four revolute joints and two prismatic joints by using three-dimensional (3-D) point (position) measurements of a calibration point. Since this binocular head is composed of off-the-shelf components, its kinematic parameters are unknown. Therefore, we can not directly apply...

When modeled with ideal joints, many vehicle suspensions contain closed kinematic chains, or kinematic loops, and are most conveniently modeled using a set of generalized coordinates of cardinality exceeding the degrees-of-freedom of the system. Dependent generalized coordinates add nonlinear algebraic constraint equations to the ordinary differential equations of motion, thereby producing a se...

The instantaneous kinematics of a hybrid manipulation system, which combines the traditional serial chain geometry with parallelism in actuation, and the problem of coordination is discussed. The indeterminacy and singularities in the inverse kinematics and statics equations and measures of kinematic performance are analyzed. Finally, coordination algorithms that maintain an optimal force distr...

The description of a serial kinematic chain should be unique, unambiguous, simple to determine, easy to use and well-behaved when small changes are made in the arrangement of the elements of the chain. The notation currently in use, introduced by Denavit andHartenberg, does not satisfy all of these criteria. It involves arbitrary choices, so that more than one description may apply to a given k...