Analysis of the Kinematic and Static Performances of Manipulator Arms Based on a 3D Graphical Environment

The need for optimization since the initial stages of the design process of robots for unstructured environments, has suggested the development of a graphical tool for a quantitative and synthetic, yet exhaustive, evaluation of the "performances" achievable from a given kinematic structure of a manipulator arm. The synthesis of the large amount of data resulting from the numerical analysis is performed through 3D solid models, that can be displayed, manipulated and en-quired using the solid modeling module of the M-CAE (Mechanical Computer Aided En-gineering) package I-DEAS, developed by SDRC. Such an approach transfers the com-plexity of examining the huge amount of data generated by the analysis to a highly interactive graphical interface with the designer. In this paper the proposed approach and the current development stage of the project are outlined and exemplified in a practical case. Possible improvements and future work are also discussed.