A parallel manipulator inspired by the original Stewart platform

摘要

This study addresses the kinematics of a new parallel manipulator inspired by the eight-bar linkage proposed as a flight simulator by Stewart almost five decades ago. Due to its partially decoupled topology, the forward displacement analysis of the robot is obtained in a nearly closed-form solution. The input-output equations of velocity and acceleration of the manipulator are systematically derived by resorting to reciprocal-screw theory. Numerical examples are included in the contribution in order to show the application of the method of kinematic analysis. As far as the authors are aware, the topology proposed in this contribution has not been reported in previous works.