In order to potentially realize the advantages of planar parallel manipulators to be used for hybrid machine tools, the inherently abundant singularities which diminish the usable workspace must be eliminated. Proper structure synthesis and dimensional synthesis can provide a good solution. So, a non-conventional architecture of a three-PPR planar parallel manipulator is proposed in this paper for a hybrid machine tool. The proposed architecture permits a large dexterous workspace with unlimited orientation capability and no singularities. It also provides partially decoupled motion which permits independent actuators control. The kinematic, singularity, orientation capability and workspace analyses of the proposed manipulator are studied to verify those advantages. Based on a non-dimensional design parameter space, the highly important indices for this application namely the workspace index (WI), the motion/force transmission index, the kinematic and dynamic dexterity indices and the stiffness index are selected to be maximized yielding proper dimensions of the design parameters. Those performance indices are proven to be uniform over all the workspace achieving highly important characteristics of uniform accuracy, acceleration characteristics, rigidity and force transmissibility. Performance evaluation is finally presented to verify the high performance of the proposed non-singular planar parallel manipulator with high orientation capability.

Singular configurations of parallel manipulators (PMs) are special poses in which the manipulators cannot maintain their inherent infinite rigidity. These configurations are very important because they prevent the manipulator from being controlled properly, or the manipulator could be damaged. A geometric approach is introduced to identify singular conditions of planar parallel manipulators (PPMs) in this paper. The approach is based on screw theory, Grassmann–Cayley Algebra (GCA), and the static Jacobian matrix. The static Jacobian can be obtained more easily than the kinematic ones in PPMs. The Jacobian is expressed and analyzed by the join and meet operations of GCA. The singular configurations can be divided into three classes. This approach is applied to ten types of common PPMs consisting of three identical legs with one actuated joint and two passive joints.

This paper is organized in two parts. In Part I, the wrench polytope concept is presented and wrench performance indices are introduced for planar parallel manipulators (PPMs). In Part II, the concept of wrench capabilities is extended to redundant manipulators and the wrench workspace of different PPMs is analyzed. The end-effector of a PPM is subject to the interaction of forces and moments. Wrench capabilities represent the maximum forces and moments that can be applied or sustained by the manipulator. The wrench capabilities of PPMs are determined by a linear mapping of the actuator output capabilities from the joint space to the task space. The analysis is based upon properly adjusting the actuator outputs to their extreme capabilities. The linear mapping results in a wrench polytope. It is shown that for non-redundant PPMs, one actuator output capability constrains the maximum wrench that can be applied (or sustained) with a plane in the wrench space yielding a facet of the polytope. Herein, the determination of wrench performance indices is presented without the expensive task of generating polytopes. Six study cases are presented and performance indices are derived for each study case.

This part of the paper investigates the wrench capabilities of redundantly actuated planar parallel manipulators (PPMs). The wrench capabilities of PPMs are determined by mapping a hypercube from the torque space into a polytope in the wrench space. For redundant PPMs, one actuator output capability constrains the wrench space with a smaller polytope that is contained inside the overall polytope. Performance indices are derived from six study cases. These indices are employed to analyze the wrench workspace for constant orientation of the mobile platform of the non-redundant 3-RRR PPM, and actuation redundant 4-RRR and 3-RRR PPMs, where the underline indicates the actuated joints. A comparison of the results shows that both of the redundantly-actuated PPMs give better wrench capabilities than the non-redundant PPM. However, it is shown that scaled for the operational cost (wrench capabilities divided by total actuation output) the non-redundant 3-RRR PPM provides the highest maximum reachable force, the 3-RRR PPM produces the highest isotropic force, and the 4-RRR yields the highest reachable moment.

In this work, the 3-RPRR, a new kinematically redundant planar parallel manipulator with six-degrees-of-freedom, is presented. First, the manipulator is introduced and its inverse displacement problem discussed. Then, all types of singularities of the 3-RPRR manipulator are analysed and demonstrated. Thereafter, the dexterous workspace is geometrically obtained and compared with the non-redundant 3-PRR planar parallel manipulator. Finally, based on a geometrical measure of proximity to singular configurations and the condition number of the manipulators' Jacobian matrices, actuation schemes for the manipulators are obtained. Different actuation schemes for a given path are obtained and the quality of their actuation schemes are compared. It is shown that the proposed manipulator is capable of following a path while avoiding the singularities.

In this work a new concept of designing two degree of freedom (2-DOF) planar parallel manipulators (PPMs) is presented. With this design the manipulator's workspace can be increased by increasing the number of cells in the manipulator. A general dynamic model is formulated for the manipulator with any number of cells. The model is adapted for SCARA and ADEPT configurations, and a new approach for balancing these type of manipulators is proposed.