Author(s)

A. M. Hay & J. A. Snyman

Abstract

The optimal multiple orientation synthesis methodology presented in this paper is aimed at determining designs of a three degrees of freedom (3-dof) planar parallel manipulator, so that the manipulator reaches, with optimal conditioning, all points in a prescribed output workspace for multiple specified constant (fixed) orientations of the manipulator platform. The optimum conditioning with respect to the manipulator design variables is obtained by minimizing the condition number over the enclosed prescribed physical workspace for all the different prescribed discrete fixed orientations. The proposed optimization methodology produces convincing results, indicating it to be a stable and efficient numerical method for designing planar parallel manipulators. Keywords: kinematics, parallel manipulators, workspace, optimal design. 1 Introduction The optimal multiple orientation synthesis methodology presented here is aimed at determining designs of a three degree of freedom (3-dof) planar parallel manipulator, so that the manipulator reaches, with optimal conditioning, all points in a prescribed output workspace for multiple specified constant (fixed) orientations of the manipulator platform. In previous work the authors developed a constrained optimization methodology for the optimal synthesis of 3-dof planar manipulators for a prescribed output workspace with a single fixed orientation of the platform specified, and applied the procedure separately to the design for three different prescribed workspaces [1]. The method was subsequently extended in a white paper

Keywords

kinematics, parallel manipulators, workspace, optimal design.