Kinematics of AdeptThree Robot Arm

Robots are very powerful elements of today’s industry. They are capable of performing many different tasks and operations precisely and do not require common safety and comfort elements humans need. However, it takes much effort and many resources to make a robot function properly. Most companies that made industrial robots can be found in the market such as Adept Robotics, Staubli Robotics and Fanuc Robotics. As a result, there are many thousands of robots in industry. An AdeptThree robot arm is a selectively compliant assembly robot arm (SCARA) manufactured by the Adept Company. In general, traditional SCARA's are 4-axis robot arms within their work envelope. They have the jointed two-link arm layout similar to our human arms and commonly used in pick-and-place, assembly, and packaging applications. As a SCARA robot, an AdeptThree robot has 4 joints which denote that it has 4 degree of freedom (DOF). The robot has been designed with completed components including operating system and programming language namely V+ (Rehiara and Smit, 2010). In robotic, there are two important studies which are kinematics and dynamics studies. Robot kinematics is the study of robot motion without regards to the forces that result it. On the other hand, the relationship between motion, and the associated forces and torques is studied in robot dynamics. In this chapter, kinematics problem for an AdeptThree robot will be explained in detail.