Some Properties of a New Kinematic Structure for Robot Manipulators

Abstract

Abstract A 3 DOF closed chain kinematic structure particularly well suited to robot manipulators is explored. The structure has a number of distinct geometries, two of which are analyzed to reveal the geometric and Jacobian relationships, singularities and the workspace volume. These relationships are found to be much simpler than for other parallel actuated spatial structures with 3 or more DOFs. The geometries studied can have large workspace volumes. An optimization procedure is applied to select link lengths for which the Jacobian is relatively homogeneous. Singularities can be restricted to the boundary of the workspace. The proposed geometries can achieve speeds and accuracies unattainable with similar serial link designs.