Development of a two-link planar manipulator with continuously variable transmission mechanism

This paper proposes a novel two-link planar manipulator with continuously variable transmission (CVT) mechanism by means of plural linear shaft motors. In our previous works, we have proposed the parallel-link manipulator with the CVT mechanism which has two orthogonal DOFs. However, its configuration is not useful for a practical field because only one main link can be rotated around two joints like a joystick. In order for this mechanism to be more useful, the two-link planar type manipulator with the CVT is newly modeled and developed. Firstly, the proposed manipulator is modeled, and its control signals are designed. Next, the output force of the end-point of the manipulator is evaluated by using both the Manipulating-Force Ellipsoid and the Dynamic Manipulability Ellipsoid. After that, several fundamental experiments are performed to evaluate the CVT mechanism and show the effectiveness of the proposed manipulator.