Comparison of Different Manipulability Indices for a 2 D.O.F. Aerial Manipulator

The kinematic and dynamic performance of any robotic manipulator can be expressed in terms of its manipulability. There are several manipulability measures or indices which are widely used for performance analysis of robotic manipulators. Among those, some important ones are the Local Conditioning Index (LCI), Measure of Isotropy (Δ) and Harmonic Mean Manipulability Index (HMMI) whose optimum value is an indicative of best kinematic configuration of the manipulator to accomplish a given task. Here in this paper five different manipulability measures are compared for a planar RR manipulator equipped with an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and advantages and drawbacks of each of them are discussed.