Forbal: Force Balanced 2-5 Degree of Freedom Robot Manipulator Built from a Five Bar Linkage

A force balanced manipulator design based on the closed chain planar five bar linkage is developed and experimentally validated. We present 2 variants as a modular design: Forbal-2, a planar 2-DOF manipulator, and its extension to 5-DOF spatial motion called Forbal-5. The design considerations in terms of geometric, kinematic, and dynamic design that fulfill the force balance conditions while maximizing workspace are discussed. Then, the inverse kinematics of both variants are derived from geometric principles.