Statistical modelling of robot manipulators

Robotics is an area encompassing a wide range of industrial, technological and scientific applications. Still, many of them pose challenging issues to the available industrial manipulators. The superior performances of the human arm induced an extensive research towards better mechanical structures. In this line of thought, considerable research has been done. However, a simple optimization criterion comprising both the kinematics and the dynamics is still lacking. In the paper the authors address this problem. The robot manipulator model and the associated optimization criterion are discussed and a new model leading to a natural optimization criterion is formulated and applied to a 2R robot manipulator