Topology design and analysis of a novel 3-translational parallel mechanism with analytical direct position solutions and partial motion decoupling
This work addresses a specific problem in robotics and mechanical engineering by providing an incremental improvement in parallel mechanism design for applications requiring precise motion control.
The paper tackled the design of a novel 3-translational parallel mechanism with analytical direct position solutions and partial motion decoupling, resulting in a mechanism that eliminates the need for one-dimensional search methods for position solutions.
According to the topological design theory and method of parallel mechanism (PM) based on position and orientation characteristic (POC) equations, this paper design a novel 3-translation (3T) PM that has three advantages, i.e., 1) it consists on three actuated prismatic joints, 2) the PM has analytical direct position solutions, and 3) the PM is of partial motion decoupling property. Firstly, the main topological characteristics such as the POC, degree of freedom and coupling degree are calculated for kinematics modelling. Due to the special constraint feature of the 3-translation, the analytical direct position solutions of the PM can be directly obtained without needing to use one-dimensional search method. Further, the conditions of the singular configuration of the PM, as well as the singularity location inside the workspace are analyzed according to the inverse kinematics.