OPTIMIZATION OF THE SINGULARITY LOCUS OF A NOVEL KINEMATICALLY REDUNDANT SPHERICAL PARALLEL MANIPULATOR

This article introduces a new architecture of spherical parallel robot which significantly extends the workspace when compared to existing architectures. To this end, the singularity locus is studied and the design parameters are chosen so as to confine the singularities to areas already limited by other constraints such as mechanical interferences. First, the architecture of the spherical redundant robot is presented and the Jacobian matrices are derived. Afterwards, the analysis of the singularities is addressed from a geometric point of view, which yields a description of the singularity locus expressed as a function of the architectural parameters. Then, the results are applied to an example set of architectural parameters chosen in order to illustrate the advantages of the redundant architecture over current designs in terms of workspace.