A three translational DoFs parallel cube-manipulator

This paper concerns the presentation and analysis of a type of three translational degrees of freedom (DoFs) parallel cube-manipulator. The parallel manipulators are the topology architectures of the DELTA robot and Tsai’s manipulator, respectively, which have three translational DoFs. In the design, the three actuators are arranged according to the Cartesian coordinate system, which means that the actuating directions are normal to each other, and the joints connecting to the moving platform are located on three sides of a cube, for such reason we call this type of manipulator the parallel cube-manipulator. The kinematics problems, singularity, workspace, compliance characteristic of the manipulator are investigated in the paper. The analysis results show that the manipulators have the advantages of no singularities in the workspace, relatively more simple forward kinematics, and existence of a compliance center. The parallel cube-manipulator can be applied to the fields of micro-motion manipulators, remote center compliance (RCC) devices, assembly, and so on.