Kinematic analysis and design of a six DOF 3-PRPS in-parallel manipulator

This paper presents a kinematic analysis and design characteristics of an in-parallel manipulator developed for the probing task application that requires high precision, active compliance, and high control bandwidth. The developed manipulator is a class of six-degree-of-freedom in-parallel platforms with 3 PRPS (prismatic-revolute-prismatic-spherical joints) chain geometry. The main advantages of this manipulator, compared with the typical Stewart platform type, are the capability of pure rotation generation and the easy prediction of the moving platform motion. The purpose of this paper is to develop an efficient kinematic model which can be used for real-time control and to propose systematic methods to design the manipulator considering workspace, manipulability, resistivity, singularity, and the existence conditions of the forward kinematic solution. Particularly, we propose a new method for checking the singularity of the parallel manipulator using the translational and rotational resistivity measures. A series of simulation are carried out to show kinematic characteristics and performance of the manipulator mechanism. A prototype manipulator was built based on the kinematic analysis results.