Design of a Redundantly Actuated Asymmetric Linear DELTA Parallel Mechanism for Singularity-Free Mode Changes

Abstract

A novel parallel mechanism which enlarges the workspace by singularity-free mode change is proposed. The proposed mechanism is inherited the design of Linear DELTA which has three degree-of-freedom translational moving plate driven by three linear actuators, in addition, extended it by redundantly actuation by four linear actuators and asymmetric design. New criterions about redundancy and singularity of redundantly actuated parallel mechanism using summation and product of determinants of minor matrices of the transposed Jacobian matrix are proposed. Redundantly actuation and asymmetric design enables singularity-free mode changes with loss redundancy but maintain non-singularity, that are evaluated by the proposed criterions. Numerical simulations demonstrate the singularity-free mode changes of the proposed mechanism.