Jacques Denavit (1 October 1930 – 12 September 2013) was a physicist and professor of mechanical engineering. Together with his teacher Richard S. Hartenberg, he developed the Denavit-Hartenberg convention where one can calculate the

forward kinematics In robot kinematics, forward kinematics refers to the use of the kinematic equations of a robot to compute the position of the Robot end effector, end-effector from specified values for the Kinematic pair, joint parameters. The kinematics equat ...

of a

kinematic chain In mechanical engineering, a kinematic chain is an assembly of rigid bodies connected by joints to provide constrained motion that is the mathematical model for a mechanical system. Reuleaux, F., 187''The Kinematics of Machinery,''(trans. an ...

using matrices. He joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Astronomical Science at Northwestern in 1958. This is where Denavit started collaborating with Richard S. Hartenberg. Together, they introduced many concepts in kinematics of serial manipulators. Denavit was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1977. He retired in 1982.

Selected publications

# A Kinematic Notation for Lower-Pair Mechanisms Based on Matrices (1955) # Kinematic Synthesis of Linkages (1964) # Numerical simulation of plasmas with periodic smoothing in phase space (1972)

References

Mechanics (people) 1930 births 2013 deaths {{US-mechanical-engineer-stub