A Translational Three-Degrees-of-Freedom Parallel Mechanism With Partial Motion Decoupling and Analytic Direct Kinematics

Abstract

According to the topological design theory and the method of parallel mechanism (PM) based on position and orientation characteristic (POC) equations, this paper studied a three-degrees-of-freedom (3-DOF) translational PM that has three advantages, i.e., (i) it consists of three fixed actuated prismatic joints, (ii) the PM has analytic solutions to the direct and inverse kinematic problems, and (iii) the PM is of partial motion decoupling property. First, the main topological characteristics, such as the POC, degree-of-freedom, and coupling degree, were calculated for kinematic modeling. Thanks to these properties, the direct and inverse kinematic problems can be readily solved. Further, the conditions of the singular configurations of the PM were analyzed, which corresponds to its partial motion decoupling property.