Baxter Kinematic Modeling, Validation and Reconfigurable Representation 2016-01-0334

A collaborative robot or cobot is a robot that can safely and effectively interact with human workers while performing industrial tasks. The ability to work alongside humans has increased the importance of collaborative robots in the automation industry, as this unique feature is a much needed property among robots nowadays. Rethink Robotics has pioneered this unique discipline by building many robots including the Baxter Robot which is exclusive not only because it has collaborative properties, but because it has two arms working together, each with 7 Degrees Of Freedom. The main goal of this research is to validate the kinematic equations for the Baxter collaborative robot and develop a unified reconfigurable kinematic model for the Left and Right arms so that the calculations can be simplified. The given unified reconfigurable kinematic model represents a base for developing a unified reconfigurable Jacobian matrix, singularity conditions and dynamic model for the Left and Right arms, which will be used for control purposes. The calculation and visualization is done using reconfigurable kinematic modeling methodology and Matalb tools.