CONCEPTUAL DESIGN AND KINEMATIC PERFORMANCEEVALUATION OF A 3-DOF PKM MODULE

摘要

This paper deals with the conceptual design and kinematic performance evaluation of a newly invented3-DOF parallel mechanism, named “TriVariant”, which forms the main body of a 5-DOF reconfigurable hybrid robot.The TriVariant is a modified version of the Tricept concept, achieved by integrating one of the three active limbs intothe passive limb. The idea leading to the innovation of the parallel mechanism is systematically addressed and itskinematic performance is evaluated. It has been concluded that the proposed hybrid system is cost effective andcompetitive in terms of theoretical kinematic performance in comparison with the Tricept.