In this thesis a new balanced robot manipulator is proposed and its characteristics are analyzed. The method for "mechanical counter balancing" is based on the theory of adding balance mass to the unbalanced robot manipulator. To show the effectiveness of the scheme, the dynamic characteristics of the balanced robot manipulator was compared with that of a conventional unbalanced robot manipulator for the various operating speeds and payloads.
The proposed balanced robot manipulator has many advantages such as simplicity of dynamic equations and reduction of computation time. However, the command input torque which drives the balanced system is sometimes larger than that of the unbalanced system, especially for high operating speed.
To overcome this disadvantages, the new sub-optimal balance mass is considered and its effectiveness is verified under the various operating conditions and trajectories, using the simplified model of PUMA 560.
