Kinematics analysis of the 4-DOF underwater manipulator served for nuclear power plant

There is an urgent need to check and salvage foreign objects for the nuclear power plant. A 4-DOF underwater manipulator served for nuclear power plant can complete the examination, salvage or other actions for the nuclear power station reactor core and foreign objects in the pool. In this paper, several researches on 4-DOF underwater manipulator served for nuclear power plant are carried out as follows: building its kinematics model with screw theory method, kinematically simulating the manipulator with Matlab and Robotics Toolbox, analyzing its working space, dexterity and singular configuration, and analyzing the displacement and velocity curves of each joint. With these methods, this paper verifies the rationality of the composition parameters and also provides theoretical basis for the design of manipulator control system and the research for kinematics and trajectory planning.