An automatic design platform capable of automatic structural analysis, structural synthesis and the application of parallel mechanisms will be a great aid in the conceptual design of mechanisms, though up to now such a platform has only existed as an idea. The work in this paper constitutes part of such a platform. Based on the screw theory and a new structural representation method proposed here which builds a one-to-one correspondence between the strings of representative characters and the kinematic structures of symmetrical parallel mechanisms (SPMs), this paper develops a fully-automatic approach for mobility (degree-of-freedom) analysis, and further establishes an automatic digital-analysis platform for SPMs. With this platform, users simply have to enter the strings of representative characters, and the kinematic structures of the SPMs will be generated and displayed automatically, and the mobility and its properties will also be analysed and displayed automatically. Typical examples are provided to show the effectiveness of the approach.
A novel two degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) parallel mechanism with remote center-of-motion (RCM) is proposed for minimally invasive surgical applications in this paper. A surgical manipulator with expected three-rotation and one-translation (3R1T) outputs can be obtained by serially connecting a revolute pair (R) and a prismatic pair (P) to the mechanism. First, kinematics of the new mechanism is analyzed and the corresponding velocity Jacobin matrix is established. Then, singularity identification of the mechanism is performed based on screw theory. Further, main dimensions of the mechanism are designed, and a physical prototype is developed to verify the effectiveness of executing RCM. The proposed mechanism has relatively simple kinematics, and can obtain a noninterference and nonsingularity cone workspace with the top angle of 60 deg based on a compact structure.
SUMMARYThis paper presents a systematic method for dealing with mobility analysis and structural synthesis of a class of important spatial mechanisms with coupling chains, which involve more complex coupling relations than spatial parallel mechanisms. First, an approach to the establishment of the motion screw equation of the class of mechanisms is derived. Then, a general methodology for mobility analysis along with detection of rigid substructures is proposed based on the motion screw equation. Third, the principle of structural synthesis of the class of mechanisms is established on the basis of the method of mobility analysis. Finally, some novel spatial mechanisms with coupling chains are synthesized, illustrating the effectiveness of the method. The study of the paper will benefit structural analysis and synthesis of more complex spatial mechanisms with coupling chains.
The general motion of a spatial mechanism is a screw motion about an instantaneous screw axis (ISA). The locus of a series of ISAs will form a ruled surface, which can be called as an axode. For a spatial mechanism with only one degree of freedom (DOF), the ISAs or the axodes of the moving platform are unique. However, the axodes of the parallel mechanisms (PMs) with multi DOF are related to the specific motion which has various possibilities. In this paper, the ISAs of the multi DOF PMs are studied using the jacobian matrix which is changing with the configurations of the moving platform. The axodes of the multi DOF PMs with different inputs or outputs are obtained using this method. Based on the analyzed results, it is very clear that the general motions of the PMs are screw motions or rotations about a series of ISAs. In the end, the parasitic motion of the PMs is studied. For a PM, the parasitic motion will exist if the rotational freedoms are not rotations about a fixed point or axis.
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