Degrees Of Freedom

Manan Kumar Khandelwal

Mechanical,Robomanipal,Udupi,India

Manankhandelwal24@gmail.com

Abstract:

The report is divided into three major parts,i.e
introduction,degree of freedom of a rigid body and
relationship between joints and degree of
freedom.The introduction goes through basic
concepts like what is degree of freedom,joints
etc.The 2nd section explains the degree pf freedom
of any rigid body and how it is calculated and the
3rd section tells the relationship between joints and
degree of freedom with the help of examples.
1. INTRODUCTION:
The degree of freedom in robotics refers to
the freedom of the robot to move in three
dimensional space.The number of
movements executed by thr robot in three
dimensional space.For every degree of
freedom a joint is required.A joint is the
point where two objects of a robot are
joined.Example-A robot that is required to
move in X,Y,Z,i.e all three directions
requires three joints or three degree of
freedom .The three degrees are 1
rotational and 2 linear
3. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOINTS
AND DEGREE OF FREEDOM VIA
EXAMPLES:
1)Revolute joint:It constraints the
movement of the two bodies and aloows
only rotation along a particular axis.It has
1 degree of freedom and 5 constraints
2)Prismatic joint:It only allows movement
in either forward or backword direction
along a particular axis.It has 1 degree of
freedom and 5 constraints
3)Universal joint:It is a joint between two
objects like shafts and allows the relative
rotation between the axis.It has 2 degree
of freedom and 4 constraints
4)Spherical Joint:It is ajoint that allows
movements in 3 different relative rotations
between the two connected parts.It has 3
degree of freedom and 3 contraints.
All these examples show that the number
of freedom of degree change with
different types of joints.

2. DEGREE OF FREEDOM OF A RIGID

BODY:
The degree of freedom of a rigid body Is
6.This can be explained with help of an
example,let a cubeoid have vertices
A,B,C,D,E,F.For point A the number of
free co-ordinates will be 3,i.e x,y,z.Point B
will have 2 free co-ordinates as one co-
ordinate is restrained by thr point A.Now
point C will only have one free co-
ordinate due to points A and B being
fixed.After point C all the other points will
have 0 free coordinates .Hence resulting in
a total of 6 degrees of freedom(3 of A +2
of B +1 of c =6)