An-Xin Liu

SUMMARY: The topological structure of a parallel manipulator (PM) determines its intrinsic topological properties (TPs). The TPs further determine essential kinematic and dynamic properties of the mechanism. TPs can be expressed through topological characteristics indexes (TCI). Therefore, defining a set of TCIs is an important issue to evaluate the TPs of PMs. This article addresses the evaluation of topological properties (ETP) of PMs based on TCI. A general and effective ETP method for PMs is proposed. Firstly, 12 TCIs are proposed, including 8 quantitative TCIs, that is, position and orientation characteristics sets (POC), dimension of the POC set, degrees of freedom (DOF), number of independent displacement equations, types and number of an Assur kinematic chain (AKC), coupling degrees of the AKCs, degrees of redundancy and the number of overs; as well as 4 qualitative TCIs, that is, selection of actuated joints, identification of inactive joints, DOF type and Input–Output motion decoupling. Secondly, the ETP method is illustrated by evaluating some well-known PMs including the Delta, Tricept, Exechon, Z3, H4 and the Gough–Stewart platform manipulators, as well as 28 other typical PMs. Via the ETP analysis of these mechanisms also some valuable design knowledge is derived and guidelines for the design of PMs are established. Finally, a 5-DOF decoupled hybrid spraying robot is developed by applying the design knowledge and the design guidelines derived from the ETP analysis.

Based on the general degree-of-freedom (DOF) formula for spatial mechanisms proposed by the author in 2012, the early single open chain (SOC)-based composition principle for planar mechanisms is extended to general spatial mechanisms in this paper. First, three types of existing mechanism composition principle and their characteristics are briefly discussed. Then, the SOC-based composition principle for general spatial mechanisms is introduced. According to this composition principle, a spatial mechanism is first decomposed into Assur kinematic chains (AKCs) and an AKC is then further decomposed into a group of ordered SOCs. Kinematic (dynamic) analysis of a spatial mechanism can then be reduced to kinematic (dynamic) analysis of AKCs and finally to kinematic (dynamic) analysis of ordered SOCs. The general procedure for decomposing the mechanism into ordered SOCs and the general method for determining AKC(s) contained in the mechanism are also given. Mechanism's kinematic (dynamic) analysis can be reduced to the lowest dimension (number of unknowns) directly at the topological structure level using the SOC-based composition principle. The SOC-based composition principle provides a theoretical basis for the establishment of a unified SOC-based method for structure synthesis and kinematic (dynamic) analysis of general spatial mechanisms.

Position and orientation characteristic (POC) equations for topological structure synthesis of serial and parallel mechanisms were proposed in a published paper by the authors. This paper will further prove the correctness and strictness of the theoretical foundation for POC equations and also be a reply to the reviewers of our follow-up papers. The main contents of this paper include: symbolic representation of mechanism topological structure and its invariance, velocity characteristic (VC) set and POC set of link and its invariance, one-to-one correspondence between elements of the VC set and POC set, POC equations for the serial mechanism and 10 corresponding “union” operation rules, and POC equations for the parallel mechanism and 14 corresponding “intersection” operation rules. In addition, the interrelations and differences among three methods (POC set based method, screw theory based method, and displacement subgroup based method) for mechanism topological structure design are concluded.

Basic principles and main characteristics of three approaches for structure synthesis of robot mechanisms (the screw theory-based approach, the displacement subgroup-based approach and the approach based on position and orientation characteristic (in short, POC) ) are studied and compared in this paper. The comparison deals with the mathematical tools, the symbolic representation of mechanism topological structure, the mathematical representation of POC of the output motion link with respect to the frame link, the basic equations for structure synthesis of serial and parallel mechanisms and relevant operation rules, and the characteristics of their synthesized mechanisms, etc. This comparative study shows that the POC-based approach is totally different from the other two approaches: (1) the POC-based approach requires only simple mathematical tools (such as vector algebra, set theory, etc), (2) the POC-based approach is conceptually simpler and therefore easier to understand and to use, and (3) the POC-based approach is more general.

Based on the Position and orientation characteristic (POC) equation of serial mechanisms proposed by the author, this paper presents a novel systematic approach for structure synthesis of rank-degenerated serial mechanisms and over-constrained single-loop kinematic chains (KCs) (excluding the Bennett mechanism etc). This approach is totally different from the approaches based on the screw theory and based on the displacement subgroup, and only simple mathematical tools (vector algebra, etc.) are used. Using this approach, the structure types of serial mechanisms with the specified ranks and the specified degree of freedom (DOF) are synthesized firstly. After that, using the structure types of the obtained serial mechanisms, structure types of over-constrained single-loop KCs with the specified ranks and the specified DOF can be generated in a straightforward way. The structure types of the obtained serial mechanisms can be used as branches of parallel mechanisms. The structure types and the ranks of the obtained over-constrained single-loop KCs can be used to calculate the DOF of multi-loop mechanisms. In fact, the systematic approach proposed in this paper is a key component of the systematic approach for structure synthesis of parallel mechanisms.

This paper presents the explicit mapping relations between topological structure of mechanism and position and orientation characteristic (abbreviated as POC hereafter) of its motion output link. It deals with: (1) The symbolic representation and the invariant of topological structure of mechanism; (2) The matrix representation of POC of mechanism motion output; (3) The POC equation of serial mechanism and its symbolic operation rules. The symbolic operation involves simple mathematic tools and fewer operation rules, and has clear geometrical meaning. So it is easy to use. The POC equation can be used for structural analysis and synthesis of serial and parallel mechanisms. The method proposed in this paper is totally different from the methods based on screw theory and based on displacement subgroup/sub-manifold.

A new viewpoint on structural composition of mechanism is proposed in this paper: any mechanism can be decomposed into a group of ordered single-open-chains (SOC). Based on the ordered SOC and its constraint property, the following concepts or principles are proposed or established: (1) the criteria for determination of basic kinematic chain (BKC). (2) the coupling degree of BKC, (3) the criteria for determination of types of degree-of-freedom, (4) the formula for calculation of number of mechanism configurations, and (5) a new unified modular method for structural, kinematic and dynamic analysis of mechanism.