Education Tool for Kinematic Analysis: A Case Study

This work describes the part of the Applied Mechanics course concerning the kinematics of mechanisms in the Mechanical Engineering master’s degree course of the University of Perugia. The kinematic study of mechanisms is essential for mechanical engineers, but also for the design and control of robots and intelligent machines. Traditionally in mechanical engineering courses this subject is dealt with methods that are not easy to generalise and visualise by students. In the activity described in this paper the lecturer, after having dealt with the fundamental properties of closed and open kinematic chains, with particular attention to problems of motion, presented an algebraic method for determining the position, velocity and acceleration of 1-DoF (degree of freedom) mechanisms, throughout explanatory examples, and proposed to the students to individually analyse mechanisms employed in robotic systems, providing a complete kinematic analysis integrated with the dynamic animation of the mechanism. This paper reports the response of the students, who were asked to select a mechanism of their choice to test the application of the taught analysis method. In particular, one student’s exercise is described as an explanatory case, which highlights the importance of kinematics in educational robotics.