Analysis and classification by geometric characteristics of robot wrist configuration

The purpose of this paper is the analysis and classification of robot wrist configurations by geometric characteristics of orientation and canceling. The relationships between wrist configurations and these characteristics must be specified for designing the kinematic mechanisms of a robot. The analysis and classification are performed, dealing with a list of useful wrist configurations. The process of establishing the list is as follows : 1) exhaustively enumerating types of wrist combinations, 2) forming rules to exclude duplicate or ineffective combinations among enumerated wrist configurations, 3) listing the useful wrist configurations without duplicate or ineffective configurations. Each wrist combination in the list is analyzed in view of the geometric characteristics consisting of the orientation and canceling characteristics. From the result of the analysis, the respective wrist configurations are classified according to their orientation and canceling characteristics.