Kinematic Design of Two Elementary 3DOF Parallel Manipulators with Configurable Platforms

Parallel Manipulators with Configurable Platforms (PMCPs) have platforms with internal degrees of freedom and form a class of manipulators that is not covered by existing type synthesis methods. Because the minimum number of legs for a PMCP is three, fully parallel 3DOF PMCPs may be considered an elementary subset of PMCPs. To support the extension of type synthesis methods to PMCPs, this paper presents the first kinematic designs of manipulators from this subset. A structured design method has led to the kinematic design of two spatial manipulators that are both capable of independently performing one translation, one rotation and one internal platform motion.