Determination of the maximal singularity-free zone of 4-RRR redundant parallel manipulators and its application on investigating length ratios of links

SUMMARYThis paper presents a new numerical approach using a Genetic algorithm (GA) to search for the singularity-free cylindrical space of a 4-RRR planar redundant parallel manipulator and investigates the effects of the joint position (namely the length ratios of two links) of each leg on the singularity-free cylindrical space. A previous method investigated the maximal singularity-free zone in a 3-dimensional (3-D) space within a given workspace. The method in this paper is improved by optimizing the maximal singularity-free zone in a 2-dimensional (2-D) plane while considering the whole workspace. This improvement can be helpful for reducing the searching time and for finding a larger singularity-free zone. Furthermore, the effect of the joint position of each leg on the maximal singularity-free zone is studied in this paper, which reveals a larger singularity-free zone than before. This result shows that changing the joint positions of one or two legs may be more practical than changing the joint positions of more legs. The approach in this paper can be used to analyze the maximal singularity-free zone of any other three-degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) planar parallel mechanisms and will be useful for the optimal design of redundant parallel manipulators.

Determining the maximal singularity-free circle or sphere of parallel mechanisms using interval analysis

SUMMARYThis paper proposes a systematic algorithm based on the concept of interval analysis to obtain the maximal singularity-free circle or sphere within the workspace of parallel mechanisms. As case studies the 3-RPR planar and 6-UPS parallel mechanisms are considered to illustrate the relevance of the algorithm for 2D and 3D workspaces. To this end, the main algorithm is divided into four sub-algorithms, which eases the understanding of the main approach and leads to a more effective and robust algorithm to solve the problem. The first step is introduced to obtain the constant-orientation workspace and then the singularity locus. The main purpose is to obtain the maximal singularity-free workspace for an initial guess. Eventually, the general maximal singularity-free workspace is obtained. The main contribution of the paper is the proposition of a systematic algorithm to obtain the maximal singularity-free circle/sphere in the workspace of parallel mechanisms. The combination of a maximal singularity-free circle or sphere with the workspace analysis by taking into account the stroke of actuators, as additional constraint to the latter problem, is considered. Moreover, the center point of the circle/sphere is not restrained to a prescribed point.