Kinematics and Dynamics of a Hybrid Parallel Manipulator

Abstract

Serial and parallel kinematical architectures, each of which has their own benefits and drawbacks, are the two basic kinds of construction used in robotics. Serial robots consist of a sequence of arms, whereas parallel robots with several prismatic or revolute joints take directly effect on the moving tool carrier. A general manipulating task in industry can be divided into two sub-tasks concerning position and orientation mechanism respectively. The position mechanism controls the general position, whereas the orientation mechanism manipulates the orientation of the end effectors. It is natural to merge the serial and parallel chains together to obtain a hybrid industrial robot, so as to retain the merits of both serial and parallel configurations—large workspace, high dexterity, high stiffness and high force-to-weight ratio—while their disadvantages are minimized. A simple way to do this is to utilize a parallel mechanism to position the end-effectors and connect serial joints to adjust the orientation, and vice versa.