A Comparison Study of Two 3-DOF Parallel.pdf

200 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS AND AUTOMATION, VOL. 19, NO. 2, APRIL 2003 A Comparison Study of Two 3-DOF Parallel Manipulators: One With Three and the Other With Four Supporting Legs Sameer Joshi and Lung-Wen Tsai Abstract—This paper presents a comparison study of the well- conditioned workspace and stiffness properties of two 3-degree-of- freedom (DOF) parallel manipulators, one with three supporting limbs and the other with four supporting limbs. The inverse kine- matics and Jacobian of these two mechanisms are analyzed. The well-conditioned workspace of each mechanism is maximized and the stiffness properties are determined. A comparison of the results indicates that the Tricept manipulator out performs the 3-UPU par- allel manipulator. Index Terms—Comparison study, Jacobian analysis, kinematics, stiffness mapping, workspace optimization. I. INTRODUCTION R ECENT trend toward high-speed machining has moti- vated research and development of new and novel type of machine tools called parallel kinematic machines (PKMs). PKMs are based on the kinematic architecture of parallel manipulators. A parallel manipulator typically consists of a moving platform that is connected to a fixed base by several limbs (or legs). The number of legs is usually at least equal to the number of degrees of freedom (DOF) of the moving plat- form such that each leg is driven by no more than one actuator and all actuators can be mounted on or near the fixed base. Note that, if the number of legs is less than the number of degrees of freedom, more than one actuator will be needed in some legs. The high stiffness and low inertia characteristics of the parallel kinematic architecture make it suitable for high-speed machine tools. Examples of PKMs include the Variax Machining Center developed by Giddings and Lewis [1], the Octahedral Hexapod by Ingersoll [2], and the Hexam by Toyoda [3]. Most 6-DOF PKMs are based on the Stewart–Gough [4], [5] platform architecture. However, six degrees of fre