Design and kinematics of a novel three DOF parallel manipulator

A novel 3-DOF parallel manipulator is presented that can be found in a cube paper fold, based on the concept of mechanisms. The parallel manipulator consists of a base plate, a movable platform, and four connecting legs. The moving platform has three degrees of freedom, which are two degrees of rotational freedom and one degree of translational freedom, with respect to the base plate. Each of the connecting leg contains a closed-loop subchain, which is symmetrical six-bar spherical metamorphic mechanism. The new parallel manipulator is very interesting for the reason of only revolute joint architecture, identical limb kinematic chain and symmetrical structure. The configuration design of the new parallel manipulator is introduced. The concept of generalized kinematic pair and screw theory are applied to the mobility analyses of the novel parallel manipulator. And the analysis results provide information on motion characteristics of the parallel manipulator. The inverse and forward kinematics problems are described. The proposed manipulator has a wide application in the fields of industrial robots, simulators, micro-motion manipulators, and parallel kinematics machines.