Calibration of Parallel Kinematic Machines: Theory and Applications

As already stated in the chapter addressing the calibration of serial manipulators, kinematic calibration is a procedure for the identification and the consequent compensation of the geometrical pose errors of a robot. This chapter extends the discussion to Parallel Manipulators (also called PKM Parallel Kinematic Machines). As described in the following (Section 2) this extension is not obvious but requires special care. Although for serial manipulators some procedures for the calibration based on automatic generation of a MCPC (Minimum Complete Parametrically Continuos) model exist, for PKMs only methodologies for individual manipulators have been proposed but a general strategy has not been presented since now. A few examples of the numerous approaches for the calibration of individual PKMs are proposed in (Parenti-Castelli & Di Gregorio, 1995), (Jokiel et al., 2000) for direct calibration and (Neugebauer et al., 1999), (Smollett, 1996) for indirect or self calibration techniques.

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