Kinematics and Singularity Analysis of the Hexaglide Parallel Robot

In the past few years, parallel manipulators have become increasingly popular in industry, especially, in the field of machine tools. Hexaglide is a 6 DOF parallel manipulator that can be used as a high speed milling machine. In this paper, the kinematics and singularity of Hexaglide parallel manipulator are studied systematically. At first, this robot has been modeled and its inverse and forward kinematic problems have been solved. Then, formulas for solving inverse velocity are derived and Jacobian matrix is obtained. After that, three different types of singularity for this type of robot have been investigated. Finally a numerical example is presented.Copyright © 2008 by ASME