Contact type determination for cylindrical pair adjustment

Adjustment for a cylindrical pair is a fundamental manipulation, which can be utilised in dynamic assembly and reconfigurable workholding systems. In this paper, a comprehensive dynamic analysis associated with the adjustment of a cylindrical pair for a single DOF motion case is developed and its relevance to the adjustment operation is investigated. It is assumed that the inner link of the lower pair is attached to a Cartesian manipulator, which is considered to be the active device and the outer link is attached to an articulated robot. Also, a methodology to uniquely identify the type of contact between the two links is developed. The type of contact determines the appropriate translation/orientation adjustment. Analysis results indicate that, depending on the size of the outer link and the friction coefficient, the contact type is either single point (translational) or double point (orientation).