Forward kinematics solutions of a special six-degree-of-freedom parallel manipulator with three limbs

• Main Authors: Jianxun Fu, Feng Gao, Yang Pan, Hui Du
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2015-05-01
• Series: Advances in Mechanical Engineering
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/1687814015582118

This article presents a special 6-degree-of freedom parallel manipulator, and the mechanical structure of this robot has been introduced; with this structure, the kinematic constrain equations are decoupled. Based on this character, the polynomial solutions of the forward kinematics problem are also presented. In this method, the closed-loop kinematic chain of the manipulator is divided into two parts, the solution forward position kinematics is obtained by a first-degree polynomial equation first, and then an eighth-degree polynomial equation in a single variable for the forward orientation kinematics is obtained. Based on those solutions, the configurations of the robot, including position and orientation of the end-effector, are graphically displayed. A numerical simulation is given to verify the algorithm, and the result implies that for a given set of input values, the manipulator can be assembled in eight different configurations at most. And a set of experiments illustrate the motion ability for forward kinematics of the prototype of this manipulator.