A SYNTHESIS APPROACH FOR RECONFIGURABLE REDUNDANT PARALLEL KINEMATIC MECHANISMS

Abstract

The design of a variety of novel Parallel Kinematic Mechanisms (PKMs) in the past three decades, and research into redundancy and reconfigurability have presented researchers with an opportunity to develop reconfigurable PKMs. In this paper, a novel synthesis approach for Reconfigurable Redundant PKMs (RR-PKMs) is presented. The approach, motivated by the required reconfigurability, can help synthesize RR-PKMs that reconfigure into lower mobility sub-configurations, assembly/working modes, and sub-PKMs, without the disassembly of the structure. Implementing the proposed approach for the design of a 5-dof machine tool, has led to the synthesis of a novel 3 × RRPRS based RR-PKM that can reconfigure into four PKMs.