FORWARD , INVERSE POSITION KINEMATICS AND WORKSPACE ANALYSIS OF PARALLEL MANIPULATORS

Abstract

In this paper, the equations for the inverse and direct kinematics problems of a spatial parallel mechanism (revolute - revolute - revolute -spherical ) of six degrees of freedom with two actuated joints and four passive joints in each of three parallel branches have been studied . The number of solutions of the inverse kinematics problem is shown to be not more than 64 ,and the solution of the direct kinematics problem has been shown to reducible to a 16th order polynomial .This implies that for a given set of actuated angles , this parallel mechanism can be assembled in at most 16 different configurations .Further numerical computations were performed to check the algebra and a numerical examples were solved to demonstrate the procedure .Finally a workspace analysis and visualization scheme is also presented