Forward kinematics of a general fully parallel manipulator with auxiliary sensors

This paper presents a solution scheme for forward kinematics of a general f ully parallel manipulator that guarantees a unique solution with only three redundant sensors. The redundant sensors were designed to minimize enginee ring difficulties in the realization, whereas an optimal sensor location wa s proposed to achieve a numerical efficiency and accuracy significantly bet ter than existing solutions. As a result, the present approach is insensiti ve to misalignment of sensor location and measurement errors, Due to these merits, the present approach can handle joint misalignment due to machining error and assembly when it is applied to the task of self-calibration, whi ch requires extreme precision. It is also suitable for applications in whic h real-time computation is needed.