Workspace

The region of positions, and sometimes orientations, that a robot's end effector can reach.

The workspace is the set of positions — sometimes including orientations — that a robot's end effector can reach, determined by its link lengths, joint types, and joint limits, independent of any particular task; industrial-robot datasheets often draw it as a side-view and top-view outline. Per Modern Robotics, every point in the workspace can be reached by at least one joint configuration, while a point in task space isn't necessarily reachable at all. Textbooks often split it further: the reachable workspace is every point the end effector can reach in at least one orientation, while the dexterous workspace is every point it can reach in any orientation. The dexterous workspace is only a subset of the reachable one, and the two terms shouldn't be used interchangeably. Before placing a robot next to a table, choosing a camera's field of view, or generating a simulated task, it's standard practice to first confirm the target actually falls inside the workspace.

ExampleA planar two-link arm where both links have length L has a disk-shaped end-effector workspace of radius 2L, assuming the joints are unconstrained and can each turn a full revolution. Franka Research 3 has an 855 mm reach, so it simply can't grasp anything noticeably farther from its base than that.

Also called

Reachable Workspace, Work Envelope

Related

Task Space · Configuration Space (C-Space) · Reach (Arm Reach / Working Radius) · Reachability Map / Inverse Reachability Map · Singular Configuration (Kinematic Singularity) · Joint Limits

Sources

Modern Robotics (Lynch & Park, 2017), 2.5 Task Space and Workspace
Wikipedia: Work envelope
UPenn MEAM 520 讲义: Manipulators（reachable / dexterous workspace） (Chinese)
Franka Robotics: Franka Research 3