Design and Analysis of a 5-DOF Dynamically Balanced Serial Robot with Variable Payloads

Robotic manipulators are indispensable tools in various industrial contexts and play critical roles in remote operations. However, conventional manipulators often lack dynamic balance, which means that when they move from one location to another they exert shaking forces and moments on the robot base. However, for many applications the zeroing of the shaking forces and moments is required, therefore the robot has to be designed to be dynamically balanced. Furthermore, this becomes more challenging when it comes to maintain balance under varying loads. In this paper, a 5-degree of freedom (DOF) dynamically balanced robot able to guarantee perfect balancing also in the presence of a variable payload is proposed. The design of the 5-DOFs robot is explained and then numerical results are reported to show the validity of the proposed system. The robot is simulated in a low-gravity environment and successful demonstrations of a pick and place operation are carried out considering an unilaterally constrained base.