A Novel Kinematic Calibration Method for a 3DOF Flexure-based Parallel Mechanism

This paper presents a novel calibration strategy for a 3DOF flexure-based parallel manipulator to overcome weaknesses and embrace merits of existing approaches. An algorithm so called simplex method is developed for the purpose of calibrating this manipulator by means of a camera-based data acquisition system. Calibration is performed according to the inverse kinematic model method. The Simplex method algorithm doesn't identify directly the errors of geometry parameters, but finds the most appropriate control model taking all the errors into account, thus can improve the moving accuracy of the end-effector sharply. In the calibration process, matrix regrouping method is introduced to obtain the most appropriate control model. After getting the control model experimentally, verification experiments utilizing a laser interferometer have also been conducted to prove the effectiveness of this novel calibration method