Kinematic Modelling and VR Simulation of a 3DOF Medical Parallel Robot with One Decoupled Motion

The robot studied in the paper has a 3DOF parallel structure of type 1PRRR+2PRPaR, with two coupled motions and one decoupled motion, composed by a mobile platform connected to the fixed base by three kinematic chains (one open kinematic chain of Prismatic Revolute Revolute Revolute type and two kinematic chains of Prismatic Revolute Parallelogram Revolute type). An analytical kinematic modelling of the parallel robot of type 1PRRR+2PRPaR is firstly presented in this paper, followed by a numerical simulation of the closed-form kinematic model and by a Virtual Reality (VR) application with control aspects. An innovative user interface for high-level control of the parallel 1PRRR+2PRPaR type robot is developed in MATLAB - Simulink and SimMechanics environment.