Formulation of Unique Form of Screw Based Jacobian for Lower Mobility Parallel Manipulators

In this paper, the unique form of the screw based Jacobian is suggested for lower mobility parallel manipulators. Utilizing the concept of the reciprocal Jacobian, the forward statics relation for each of the serial kinematic chains of a parallel manipulator can be first obtained and then used to derive both the forward statics and the inverse velocity relations of the manipulator. The screw based Jacobian of a parallel manipulator can be formulated from the inverse velocity relation in such a way that it consists of the reciprocal Jacobians of the serial kinematic chains. Since any reciprocal Jacobian is unique to the corresponding serial chain, the suggested form of the screw based Jacobian is also determined uniquely to the lower mobility parallel manipulator. Two examples are given to illustrate the proposed method, one for the 3DOF parallel manipulator with three identical prismatic-revolute-spherical joints-serial chains and the other for the 4DOF parallel manipulator with nonidentical serial chains (two spherical-prismatic-spherical- and one revolute-revolute-prismatic-revolute joints-serial chains). [DOI: 10.1115/1.4002696]