Degrees of Freedom Analysis of Mechanisms using the New Zebra Crossing Method

Mobility, which is a basic property for a mechanism has to be analyzed to find the degrees of freedom. A quick method for calculation of degrees of freedom in a mechanism is proposed in this work. The mechanism is represented in a way that resembles a zebra crossing. An algorithm is proposed which is used to determine the mobility from the zebra crossing diagram. This algorithm takes into account the number of patches between the black patches, the number of joints attached to the fixed link and the number of loops in the mechanism. A number of cases have been discussed which fail to give the desired results using the widely used classical Kutzbach-Grubler formula.