Type synthesis of six-DOF wrist-partitioned parallel manipulators

A six-DOF wrist-partitioned parallel manipulator is a parallel manipulator in which three of the six actuated joints are used to control the position of a point on the moving platform while the other three are further used to control the orientation of the moving platform. Such parallel manipulators are, in fact, the parallel counterparts of the wristpartitioned serial manipulators, which are widely used in industry. Unlike parallel manipulators of a general structure, a six-DOF wrist-partitioned parallel manipulator usually has simple kinematic characteristics such as its forward displacement analysis and singularity analysis are easy to solve. This paper deals with the type synthesis of six-DOF wrist-partitioned parallel manipulators. An approach is first proposed for the type synthesis of this class of parallel manipulators. Using the proposed approach, six-DOF wrist-partitioned parallel manipulators can be constructed from the types of three-DOF nonoverconstrained spherical parallel manipulators. A large number of six-DOF wristpartitioned parallel manipulators are then obtained, and several types of practical relevance are also identified. Copyright © 2008 by ASME.