KINEMATIC CHAINS - ISOMORPHISM, INVERSIONS AND TYPE OF FREEDOM USING THE CONCEPT OF HAMMING DISTANCES

Kinematic chains may satisfy the numerical relationship between the number of links, joints and degree of freedom, but of the possible combinations of a specified number of links, one should be able to isolate structurally distinct chains and their inversions. The number and types of loops and their arrangement in the chain may be such that the chain may have total or partial or fractionated freedom. The methods reported so far are not very efficient computationally. In this paper a very simple and computationally efficient method based on the concept of Hamming distance is proposed to detect distinct chains, inversions and type of freedom i. e. partial and fractionated freedom in multi-degree-multi-loop mechanisms.