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 pris matic 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 ana the effe ct 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 meas ure the position or the orientation of the mobile platform.