Steerability for planar dissipative passive haptic interfaces

This research addresses the ability of dissipative passive actuators to generate control effects on a passive haptic interface. The ability is first identified as the steerability, i.e., the ability to redirect motions of a manipulator. The force-generation analysis of each individual actuator is then selected as an approach to evaluate the steerability. Passive steerability angle is defined to quantify the steerability for a planar manipulator. Two-sided steerability is defined as a minimum requirement for a planar robot to redirect all motions. A nonredundant 2R manipulator does not have two-sided steerability in all situations. Redundancy brought by serial or parallel structures could improve the steerability of a manipulator. The steerability theorem is developed to determine two-sided steerability for a multijoint manipulator. The research focuses on using brakes, a common type of dissipative passive actuators.