Compositional Submanifolds of Prismatic–Universal–Prismatic and Skewed Prismatic–Revolute– Prismatic Kinematic Chains and Their Derived Parallel Mechanisms

Abstract

The kinematic chains that generate the planar motion group in which the prismatic-joint direction is always perpendicular to the revolute-joint axis have shown their effectiveness in type synthesis and mechanism analysis in parallel mechanisms. This paper extends the standard prismatic–revolute–prismatic (PRP) kinematic chain generating the planar motion group to a relatively generic case, in which one of the prismatic joint-directions is not necessarily perpendicular to the revolute-joint axis, leading to the discovery of a pseudo-helical motion with a variable pitch in a kinematic chain. The displacement of such a PRP chain generates a submanifold of the Schoenflies motion subgroup. This paper investigates for the first time this type of motion that is the variable-pitched pseudo-planar motion described by the above submanifold. Following the extraction of a helical motion from this skewed PRP kinematic chain, this paper investigates the bifurcated motion in a 3-prismatic–universal–prismatic (PUP) parallel mechanism by changing the active geometrical constraint in its configuration space. The method used in this contribution simplifies the analysis of such a parallel mechanism without resorting to an in-depth geometrical analysis and screw theory. Further, a parallel platform which can generate this skewed PRP type of motion is presented. An experimental test setup is based on a three-dimensional (3D) printed prototype of the 3-PUP parallel mechanism to detect the variable-pitched translation of the helical motion.