Presented in this paper is the design philosophy employed for the construction of DIESTRO, an isotropic, six-axis,
serial manipulator. The kinematic criteria applied so far in manipulator design have been based largely on kinematic
solvability, in the sense of allowing for closed-form inverse kinematic solutions. As opposed to this rather limiting
criterion, DIESTRO was designed kinematically so as to having a set of configurations in which its Jacobian matrix
allows its inversion without roundoff error amplification. Although the basic kinematic chain is of the serial type, this
design criterion led to an architecture not admitting closed-form inverse kinematic solutions. The central task was to
produce an accurate robot under the prescribed specifications. It is believed that, under similar workspace and load
specifications, the particularly challenging design of many other serial manipulators with complex architectures can
benefit from the design guidelines given here.
