On certain aspects of the zero reference position method and its applications to an industrial manipulator

The zero reference position method for analyzing robot motions is based upon an arbitrary choice of the zero reference position, the principle of displacement similarity, and the hand-to-the base sequence of changing the joint variables in a serial manipulator. Its applications in performing recursive computations, formulating explicit governing equations, and obtaining closed form solutions for serial manipulators are presented in this paper. It is shown to be an efficient method for updating manipulator positions. A Bendix type of industrial robot is used for illustrating the closed form solution procedure.