The kinematics and calibration of a 5 degrees-of-freedom hybrid serial-parallel kinematics manipulator

Hybrid serial-parallel link manipulators combine the advantages and eliminate disadvantages of their ancestors the pure parallel or serial kinematics manipulators. The particular type of hybrid machine shown in this paper consists of two planar three degrees-of-freedom manipulators assembled together in a special configuration. This paper developed the kinematic analysis of this mechanism, namely the inverse and forward kinematics of these manipulators. Furthermore, this paper developed a calibration model for this type of manipulators, and calibration model results were very promising. A graphical tool was developed to assist user in visualizing postures and for solving the different kinematics problems.