Design of Constructing Virtual Gravity for Link Mechanisms

Energy-consuming devices are essential to modern life, but must be made more efficient to meet environmental conservation goals. One of the prime causes of energy loss is gravity. In this paper, the authors propose a framework to design potential fields for link mechanisms to minimize the amount of gravitational potential energy consumed, besides loss to friction and inertia. The framework allows design of customized potential fields such that any object or link mechanism can be moved along specific trajectories by simply adding a small auxiliary force that just overcomes the losses. The authors confirm this theory and the effects on mechanisms by kinematic analysis.