Kinematics Design of a Planar Parallel Controllable Mechanism Based on Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm

Planar parallel controllable mechanism, which is a combination of two types of motor and mechanism, has better flexible transmission behavior. In this paper, the kinematics analysis for a planar parallel controllable fivebar mechanism is introduced. In order to improve kinematic performance of the controllable mechanism, an optimization design for the mechanism is performed with reference to kinematics objective function. A hybrid optimization algorithm which combines Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) with MATLAB Optimization Toolbox is proposed to solve the optimal design problem with constraint condition. Compared with conventional optimum evaluation methods such as Simplex search and Powell method, PSO algorithm can improve the efficiency of searching in the whole field by gradually shrinking the area of optimization variable. Compared to GA, PSO is easy to implement and there are few parameters to adjust. Finally, a numerical example and discuss are carried out, the simulation and analysis results show that the optimization method is feasible and satisfactory in the design of the controllable mechanism.