KINEMATICS OF A 3-DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM IN-PARALLEL ACTUATED MANIPULATOR MECHANISM

This paper presents the first and second order kinematic analysis of a three-degrees-of-freedom 3-RPS parallel robot mechanism. The position and orientation parameters of the moving platform of this mechanism a re six, however only three of them are independent. The Jacobian of th e mechanism is a 3 by 6 rectangular matrix. This imposes difficulties on the kinematic analysis of this mechanism. This paper presents a met hod to formulate three motion constrain equations which are consistent with the kinematic structure of the mechanism, and establishes the ve locity and acceleration relationship between the independent output mo tions and three input parameters in close form. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scie nce Ltd.