A Case Study of Spherical Parallel Manipulators Fabricated via Laminate Processes
This addresses cost and time savings in robot fabrication for manufacturing or prototyping applications, but it is incremental as it adapts existing techniques to a new process.
The paper tackled replicating traditional robotic manipulator performance using laminated fabrication, showing that a 2-DOF spherical parallel manipulator built this way can track rotations with acceptable precision in open-loop control, indicating similar performance to conventional methods.
This paper evaluates how laminated techniques may be used to replicate the performance of more traditionally manufactured robotic manipulators. In this case study, we introduce a laminated 2-DOF spherical, parallel manipulator. Taking advantage of laminating techniques in the construction of the robot can result in considerable saving in construction costs and time, but, the challenges caused by this technique have to be addressed. By using stiffer materials in rigid links, the rigidity of the robot is increased to an acceptable level. We discuss one method for compensating position uncertainty via an experimental identification technique which uses a neural network to create a forward kinematic model. Final results show that the proposed mechanism is able to track desired rotation with acceptable precision using open-loop model-based control. This indicates that parallel manipulators fabricated using lamination techniques can provide similar performance with prototypes made in conventional methods.