Abstract:

A Denavit-Hartenberg (D-H) quaternion transformation method for kinematics analysis of serial mechanisms was presented. Firstly, the point mapping is described with quaternion. Then a D-H quaternion transformations method for motion transformation between adjacent linkages was proposed. Moreover, the matrix operation method of D-H quaternion transformations was illustrated to construct the classical D-H homogeneous transformation matrix in robotics, which can be theoretically proven that the proposed D-H quaternion transformation method is correct. Based on the above D-H quaternion transformation formula of motion transformation between adjacent linkages, the D-H quaternion transformation method for kinematics analysis of serial mechanisms with any number of linkages was further proposed. By analyzing the kinematics of PUMA robot, the effectiveness and correctness of the proposed method was validated as well. The D-H quaternion transformation method has clear geometric meaning and the computation process is simple. The method is proved effective for kinematics analysis of serial mechanisms.

Key words: serial mechanism, kinematics analysis, Denavit-Hartenberg quaternions, Denavit-Hartenberg matrix