Workspace analysis of a novel underactuated robot wrist based on virtual prototyping

The workspace denotes the work area of a robot, which is an important foundation of designing a robot. As formulating the suitable workspace models for a robot wrist is very crucial for analyzing its behavior, many researches have been focused on it in recent decades with a result of many valuable contributions. However, current researches always focus on rigid and full actuated robot wrist, while the robot wrist is always a multibody system, which can affect the accuracy of workspace analysis and simulation. This paper proposed a model of workspace analysis of a novel underactuated robot wrist based on virtual prototyping. After the conceptual design of a novel underactuated mechanism was introduced, the degree of freedom of the underactuated robot wrist was calculated. Then the detailed design of underactuated robot wrist was done. The whole workspace model of the robot system was then established. It was indicated that the working points in the workspace of the robot were distributed compactly and uniformly, which can meet design requirements with high efficiency. The workspace analysis of underactuated robot wrist and the accuracy analysis of underactuated robot wrist were also put forward. The result was testified by the simulation on Matlab, which demonstrated that the methodology is obviously helpful for robot design.