Self calibration of Stewart-Gough parallel robots without extra sensors

This paper presents a method for the autonomous calibration of six degrees-of-freedom parallel robots. The calibration makes use of the motorized prismatic joint positions corresponding to some sets of configurations where in each set either a passive Universal joint or a passive Spherical joint is fixed using a lock mechanism. Simulations give us an idea about the number of sets that must be used, the number of configurations by set and the effect of noise on the calibration accuracy. The main advantage of this method is that it can be executed rapidly without need to external sensors to measure the position or the orientation of the mobile platform.