Trajectory planning of parallel manipulators for global performance optimization

Abstract

The problem of finding optimal configurations for parallel manipulators is investigated in this paper. The task is assumed incompletely specified, namely, the orientation of the tool about its axis is irrelevant to the task. To solve the problem, a procedure is proposed based on the feasibility maps associated with the specified path and an algorithm for trajectory planning into the maps. The obtained motion of the manipulator is such that the condition number of the homogenized parallel Jacobian matrix is optimized along the whole path. The study is illustrated on a planar 3-RRR manipulator. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated on an experimental prototype. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.