Topology based rating of kinematic chains and inversions using information theory

A kinematic chain is identified completely by its (i) link assortment (ii) number of joints and their type and (iii) the loops, their size and adjacency. All of them are related to some design invariants which in turn indicates the possible behaviour of the chain e.g. structural error performance, power loss etc. An attempt is made to rate the kinematic chains, among themselves, for motion generation and transmission. In the process it is shown that the proposed method has strong resemblance to infer mation theory developed in the area of communications and hence the latter can be adapted to reveal various characteristics of kinematic chains and inversions based on their topology. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.