Modelling and Experimental Evaluation of a Static Balancing Technique for a New Horizontally Mounted 3-UPU Parallel Mechanism

Abstract

This paper presents the modelling and experimental evaluation of the gravity compensation of a horizontal 3-UPU parallel mechanism. The conventional Newton-Euler method for static analysis and balancing of mechanisms works for serial robots; however, it can become computationally expensive when applied to the analysis of parallel manipulators. To overcome this difficulty, in this paper we propose an approach, based on a Lagrangian method, that is more efficient in terms of computation time. The derivation of the gravity compensation model is based on the analytical computation of the total potential energy of the system at each position of the end-effector. In order to satisfy the gravity compensation condition, the total potential energy of the system should remain constant for all of the manipulator's configurations. Analytical and mechanical gravity compensation is taken into account, and the set of conditions and the system of springs are defined. Finally, employing a virtual reality environment, some experiments are carried out and the reliability and feasibility of the proposed model are evaluated in the presence and absence of the elastic components.