Professional Engineering Publishing (Institution of Mechanical Engineers)
Abstract:
In this article, a method to locate direct kinematic singularities of a 3-3 Stewart-Gough parallel manipulator (called a Stewart manipulator henceforth) is proposed. The Stewart manipulator is first replaced by an analogous manipulator, the 3PRPS parallel manipulator, and as the first three active joints of this manipulator remain fixed, this manipulator reduces to an asymmetric 3RPS parallel manipulator. With all moving platform's degrees of freedom, except its height, properly specified, there exists at least one height that gives rise to direct kinematic singularity of the asymmetric 3RPS manipulator and this height is a root of a cubic polynomial equation. The procedure to locate direct kinematic singularities thus reduces to solving cubic polynomial equations. Numerical results show that every singular configuration of the asymmetric 3RPS manipulator thus-determined is also a singular configuration of the 3-3 Stewart-Gough platform.
Relation:
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part K, Journal of Multi-body Dynamics 219(4), pp.311-324
