Programming of Mechanism Motion.

Abstract : This thesis develops the foundation for a high-level motion description language called MDL. It provides data types and operations with which the motions of mechanisms can be conveniently exprssed. It is shown how tree-structured, massless mechanisms can be constructed from a set of planar primitives. The world of moving mechanisms is represented by the scene. The mechanisms of the scene may kinematically interact with other mechanisms. A scheme is introduced for expressing the set joint movements of a mechanism in terms of sequences of joint-variable increments called actions and treated as data types. In action expressions, primitive and non-primitive actions are combined into new actions by generalized arithmetic operators as well as by sequential and parallel composition. Motions occur when actions are imposed on mechanisms. Structured descriptions of actions and motions are thus made possible.