Kinematics and dynamics analysis of a two-degree-of-freedom spherical wrist

The present paper proposes the analysis of a spherical wrist with two degrees of freedom for scanning system applications. The wrist consists of two chains of revolute-revolute pairs. A slotted arc connecting the two chains behaves as a further revolute pair. Thus, the mechanism is an overconstrained (meaning of this definition is discussed in this work) single-loop kinematic chain composed of five revolute pairs equivalent to a spherical motion generator since all its axes intersect at a point. Throughout the paper, the kinematic analysis is developed including some details about the workspace, which depends on the design of the slotted arc. The performance index given as the inverse of the condition number is used to measure the performances of the motion of the moving platform of the wrist. The singularity poses found were examined in detail. A simplified dynamic model is proposed that provides the torques suitable for satisfying a given kinematics. Finally, the paper presents a motorized hardware model of the mechanism assembled in the laboratory.