Jian S Dai

This book addresses the design of compliant mechanisms, presenting readers with a good understanding of both the solid mechanics of ?exible elements and their configuration design, based on a mechanism-equivalent approach in the framework of screw theory. The book begins with the theoretical background of screw theory, and systematically addresses both the compliance characteristics of flexible elements and their configuration design. The book then covers a broad range of compliant parallel mechanism design topics, from stiffness to constraint decomposition, from conceptual design to dimensional design, and from analysis to synthesis, as well as the large deformation problem; this is followed by both simulations and physical experiments, offering readers a solid foundation and useful tools. Given its scope and the results it presents, the book will certainly benefit and inform future research on the topic. It offers a valuable asset for researchers, developers, engineers and graduate students with an interest in compliant mechanisms, robotics and screw theory.

This book addresses the design of compliant mechanisms, presenting readers with a good understanding of both the solid mechanics of ?exible elements and their configuration design, based on a mechanism-equivalent approach in the framework of screw theory. The book begins with the theoretical background of screw theory, and systematically addresses both the compliance characteristics of flexible elements and their configuration design. The book then covers a broad range of compliant parallel mechanism design topics, from stiffness to constraint decomposition, from conceptual design to dimensional design, and from analysis to synthesis, as well as the large deformation problem; this is followed by both simulations and physical experiments, offering readers a solid foundation and useful tools. Given its scope and the results it presents, the book will certainly benefit and inform future research on the topic. It offers a valuable asset for researchers, developers, engineers and graduate students with an interest in compliant mechanisms, robotics and screw theory.

Robots interact with the world through curves and surfaces — the subjects of study in differential geometry. This book applies the moving-frame method, developed extensively by Élie Cartan, and the adjoint approach, conceived by Ernesto Cesàro, to study the kinematics of two surfaces subject to rolling contact and sliding-rolling contact to demonstrate the applications in robotic in-hand manipulation. Firstly, it explores two surfaces, and the geometry of both surfaces comes into play. Secondly, the book focuses on the geometry of the two surfaces within the encompassing space (extrinsic) rather than within the surfaces (intrinsic) because the book is concerned with the kinematics of one surface in three-dimensional Euclidean space — the real world. The book then concludes by applying this approach in robotic in-hand manipulation in the last chapter.