A formulation for task based design of robot manipulators

The authors discuss how to design a manipulator from a given task. While the ultimate goal is to design all kinematic and dynamic parameters of a manipulator, they consider only kinematic parameters. Optimal design of a manipulator even for a simple task is difficult because it involves a complex task description and constraints on possible manipulators and many design variables that lead to a combinatorial explosion. For the example of designing a space shuttle tile servicing robot, they introduce a formulation of a given task and manipulator constraints