Spatial remote center analysis of parallel robots

Parallel manipulators have a wide range of motion capability characterized by their high precision, accuracy and speed. Their main limitation is of small workspaces. This paper presents the workspace analysis in a different perspective. It deals with combined translation and rotation workspace of platform of parallel mechanism. The paper gives an insight into creating spatial remote centers and their spherical ranges, which are critical for many robotic applications. A generalized approach for workspace analysis for parallel mechanism is presented. The geometrical scheme to obtain remote centre space for both planar and spatial parallel manipulators is explained. Real design examples of a 3 DOF Planar Parallel Kinematic Mechanism (PPKM) and a 6 DOF Parallel Kinematic Mechanism (6D PKM) are presented and are experimentally validated.