A 6-DOF adaptive parallel manipulator with large tilting capacity

In this paper, a novel 6 degrees of freedom (DOFs) adaptive parallel manipulator with large tilting capacity is presented. The manipulator consists of four identical peripheral limbs and one center limb connecting the base and the moving platform. Due to the special architecture, the doubly actuated center limb of the manipulator could have infinite inverse solutions. In every configuration of the end-effector, the manipulator can adapt its center limb to the position and orientation with best dexterity. An optimization equation for obtaining the optimized dexterity of the manipulator is introduced to solve this nonholonomic problem, which also makes the manipulator capable of large tilting capacity. Targeting for the application of five-face machining, the detailed kinematic analysis of the manipulator is developed, which includes the closed-form solutions of inverse position problems, the singularity, dexterity, workspace and tilting capability. The analysis developed in this paper shows that the proposed manipulator has large tilting capacity and thus a suitable candidate for five-face machining. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.