On the design of mobile parallel robots for large workspace applications

In this paper, several considerations for designing industry oriented robots which combine the mobility of legged robots and advantages of parallel mechanisms are outlined. For designing such optimized robots in terms of simplicity and performance, a topology study is done based on the mobility analysis. Applying some design constraints, potential topologies of such robots are identified. One architecture is chosen for designing a tripod robot. Both inverse and forward kinematic problems of this robot are derived in order to simulate its gait motion. The analysis and simulations show that: integrating some clamping devices and some lockable passive joints, six actuators are enough to build a legged manipulator which can not only perform 6-axis machining but can also walk on a curved supporting media.