Kinematic Analysis of SCARA Robots

The SCARA robot, formally known as the Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA), is characterized by its high speed and precise positioning capabilities. These advantages have led to its widespread adoption in applications such as assembly, material handling, and grasping. Consequently, SCARA robots contribute significantly to improving production efficiency and have attracted substantial research interest within the academic community. Due to its inherent structural configuration, the SCARA robot typically features a bulky base and certain link members. This volumetric characteristic poses challenges for deployment in workspaces with strict size constraints. To enhance the applicability of SCARA robots in such specific scenarios, this study focuses on modeling an optimized structural variant. The model is developed based on the robot's architecture: its workspace is analyzed, a schematic diagram and corresponding Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) parameters are established, and a kinematic model is constructed within MATLAB along with the associated reference frames. The homogeneous transformation method is employed to formulate the SCARA robot's kinematic model. Subsequently, the closed-form solutions for both the forward and inverse kinematics are derived. This comprehensive kinematic analysis provides a foundational reference for research into SCARA robot control methodologies.