Kinematics

Kinematics – a field of mechanics studying motion of non-deformable solid bodies in a geometrical sense – without considering body mass and affecting forces. The simulated mechanism is defined with a set of components (links), related with each other by various kinematic joints. Each joint simulates movable contacts of the links and puts a number of restrictions of their relative position. The control over devices is set by the law of motion for a single or several driving links.

The direct problem of kinematics is to define the position of each link at every moment of time depending on control over the mechanism. The inverse problem of kinematics is to calculate positions of the driving links to achieve the given position of the driven links. Both problems are resolved by kinematic analysis of mechanisms with the modern systems of computer-aided engineering (CAE).