Simulation and kinematic analysis of a 3-DOF marine antenna pedestal focusing on singularity avoidance and its...

The antenna pedestal in marine satellite communications uses three degrees of freedom, with an added degree to avoid singularity, which can increase joint angular velocity and acceleration. This study models the mechanism in SolidWorks, simulates it in Matlab, uses kinematic equations and the Denavit-Hartenberg method to propose a path that minimizes joint velocity and acceleration during tracking. The novelty of this study as a summary includes first identifying the required degree of freedom to address the redundancy issue and introducing an equation based on that degree of freedom considering the workspace far from singularity to add to the inverse kinematics equations of the mechanism. The second is finding the optimal value of the influential parameter for the mechanism to pass through the farthest range from the singularity when the end-effector passes 90 $$ above the mechanism, the third is a trade-off between the effects of different variable values from the equation on the angular velocity of the joints and operating in the workspace far from the singularity, and finally, the fourth is finding the optimal value of the parameter from the introduced equation to simultaneously optimize the maximum angular acceleration of the joints and operating in the workspace far from the singularity.