A new spatial rotor beam element for modeling spatial manipulators with joint and link flexibility

A new model of spatial rotor beam element is proposed firstly, and the dynamic equations of spatial manipulators considering joint and link flexibility is then derived in this paper. The numerical simulation of a 4R four-link spatial manipulator is obtained for the first time. Results show that both the elastic deformation of joint and that of link flexibility have significant effect on the position error and orientation error of manipulators, and they couple each other.