Kinematic Analysis of a 2-DOF Planar Parallel Manipulator with Automated Selective Activation Mechanism to Avoid Singularities

Abstract

Parallel Manipulator has lot of applications in areas like flight/automobile simulators, earthquake simulators, milling machine, etc. Main disadvantage of parallel manipulator is the presence of singularities within the workspace. Due to this, entire workspace of a parallel manipulator cannot be used effectively. To overcome this disadvantage, an automated selective activation mechanism is proposed, designed and fabricated using solenoids, gear train and belt drive arrangement. By using this mechanism interior singularity are crossed and this enables the user to utilize the entire workspace. Selective activation mechanism with automation ability is designed in such a way that, depending on activation of solenoid, active joint of manipulator changes from one position to another, which subsequently changes the singularity curves. By changing active joint positions, 4 ways of operating manipulator are identified. For all type of operations, singularity curves are plotted using MATLAB.