What is Spatial Kinematics?
Spatial kinematics is used to describe the movement of an object in three dimensional space. A knee bending at the joint or the movement of a robotic arm are examples of spatial kinematics. Imagine an arm bending. How would you measure the distance of its movement? Would you measure from the tip of the fingers or the elbow? When an arm bends, parts of it move down, parts of it move up. What direction is it moving? Different parts of the arm are moving at different speeds. How can you measure how fast it moves? Unlike basic kinematics, which studies the movement of objects along straight lines, spatial kinematics is more complex. In basic kinematics, you only need two fixed points, the start and finish, to describe motion. A car driving a straight road between two cities, for example. With these two points you can measure its speed, velocity, duration of travel and the distance of travel. In spatial kinematics, the movement of an object must be measured from a series of points along the
