Mechanical Design and Kinematic Analysis of a Three-Legged Six Degree-of-Freedom Parallel Manipulator

In this paper a three-legged 6-dof platform-type parallel manipulator is described. Each of the legs is a serial subchain with three revolute joints connected to the output platform via a spherical joint. Due to the proposed asymmetrical 3-2-1 distribution of the controlled joints, a closed-form solution exists to the forward kinematics problem. The mechanical design of the manipulator has been developed. The forward and inverse kinematics as well as the instantaneous kinematics of the mechanism have been solved analytically.