Design of Parallel Mechanisms for Flexible Manufacturing With Reconfigurable Dynamics

Reconfigurable robotic systems can enhance productivity and save costs in the ever growing flexible manufacturing regime. In this work, the idea to synthesize robotic mechanisms with dynamic properties that are reconfigurable is studied, and a methodology to design reconfigurable mechanisms with this property is proposed, named reconfigurable dynamics (Re-Dyn). The resulting designs have not only the kinematic properties reconfigurable, such as link lengths, but also properties that directly affect the forces and accelerations, such as masses and inertias. A 2-degree of freedom (DOF) parallel robot is used as a test subject. It is analyzed and redesigned with Re-Dyn. This work also presents the robots forward dynamic model in detail, which includes the force balancing mediums. The connection method is directly utilized for this derivation, which is well suited for multibody dynamics and provides insight for design parameters (DPs). Dynamic performance indices are also briefly discussed as related to the Re-Dyn method. After redesigning the robot, a full simulation is conducted to compare performances related to a flexible manufacturing situation. This illustrates the advantages of the proposed method.