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Article
Kinematic effects of number of legs in 6-DOF UPS parallel mechanisms
Robotica (2017)
  • Mohammad H. Abedin-Nasab, Rowan University
  • Farzam Farahmand
  • Bahram Tarvirdizadeh
  • Hassan Zohoor
  • Jaime Gallardo-Alvarado
Abstract
In this paper, we study the kinematic effects of number of legs in 6-DOF UPS parallel manipulators. A group of 3-, 4-, and 6-legged mechanisms are evaluated in terms of the kinematic performance indices, workspace, singular configurations, and forward kinematic solutions. Results show that the optimum number of legs varies due to priorities in kinematic measures in different applications. The non-symmetric Wide-Open mechanism enjoys the largest workspace, while the well-known Gough–Stewart (3–3) platform retains the highest dexterity. Especially, the redundantly actuated 4-legged mechanism has several important advantages over its non-redundant counterparts and different architectures of Gough–Stewart platform. It has dramatically less singular configurations, a higher manipulability, and at the same time less sensitivity. It is also shown that the forward kinematic problem has 40, 16, and 1 solution(s), respectively for the 6-, 3-, and the 4-legged mechanisms. Superior capabilities of the 4-legged mechanism make it a perfect candidate to be used in more challenging 6-DOF applications in assembly, manufacturing, biomedical, and space technologies.
Publication Date
December, 2017
DOI
10.1017/S0263574716000862
Citation Information
Mohammad H. Abedin-Nasab, Farzam Farahmand, Bahram Tarvirdizadeh, Hassan Zohoor, et al.. "Kinematic effects of number of legs in 6-DOF UPS parallel mechanisms" Robotica Vol. 35 Iss. 12 (2017) p. 2257 - 2277
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/mohammad-abedin-nasab/2/