Kinematics of underactuated robotics for product carbon footprint

Product low-carbon design has become one of the important means of sustainable manufacturing. An important design principle should be to minimize the weight of the robot while maximizing its motion efficiency. Therefore, how to develop and analyze low-carbon robots is the focus of this paper. The illustration used in the paper is a novel proposal for an underactuated robotic ankle exoskeleton for human workers. Conventional robots have enough actuators to perform independent movements. In contrast, an underactuated device emphasizes the use of natural dynamic control systems. Kinematics does not take into account the causal force of motion to study moving objects. This paper uses kinematic ankle joint as an example to analyze kinematics. The human worker is the causal force for an exoskeleton design. In order to make it easier for human to use, this paper proposes a joint exoskeleton based on underactuated spherical parallel mechanism. The underactuated mechanism has reduced a lot of unnecessary weight and added more degree of freedom compared with the traditional mechanism. Through the optimal design of the mechanism to reduce its carbon footprint through its life cycle. The carbon footprint analysis of the underactuated robotic ankle exoskeleton is then discussed in detail, which is given as an example to demonstrate this approach. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.