Feasibility Study of the Seven-Bar Linkage 7-PR(RRRR)RP Used for Medical Disinfection Robot

Current disinfection robots either have a bulky design or cannot operate in multiple configurations, therefore being unable to disinfect the hard-to-reach areas, which leads to low efficiency of the disinfection process. A solution for this problem would be to use disinfection robots with folding mechanisms which can operate in different configurations based on the area type that needs to be disinfected. This paper presents the feasibility study of the 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage used for a disinfection robot with folding mechanism. First, the structure’s parameters were computed with a synthesis method by developing the inequalities system in order to avoid the singularities positions of the mechanism. This initial method took into consideration different values of the design coefficient p (which indicates the two possible designs of the selected linkage) and an arbitrary value of the coefficient k > 1, which was imposed in order to substitute the resulting inequalities system with an equation system. However, applying this method does not ensure that the optimal 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage structure for the design of a medical disinfection robot is obtained. Furthermore, an optimized synthesis method was applied, which took into consideration the ratio between the total height of the mechanism and its total size. The parameters of the seven-bar linkage were computed for multiple values of the design coefficient p ∈ [1.1; 2] and multiple values of the coefficient k ∈ (0; 2], while a target function was implemented in order to identify the mechanism with the highest height range and the lowest size, which is considered to be the optimal structure for the design of a medical disinfection robot with a folding mechanism. The accuracy and the reliability of the results are furthermore strengthened by a performance analysis between the optimal indicated structure from the optimized synthesis method and other 7-PR(RRRR)RP seven-bar linkage structures, which were computed with different values of the parameters.