A module-based method for design and analysis of reconfigurable parallel robots

Presented in this paper is a method for design and analysis of reconfigurable parallel robots. Inherent modularity in the parallel robot lends itself a natural candidate for reconfiguration. By taking the branches as building blocks, a number of modular parallel robots can be constructed, from which a reconfigurable parallel robot can be realized. Among three types of reconfiguration, namely, geometry morphing, topology morphing, and group morphing, the method presented here is for the last two reconfigurations, thereby advancing the current research that is mainly limited to geometry morphing. It is shown that the module-based method not only provides a systematic way of designing a reconfigurable parallel robot, but also offers a unified modeling for robot analysis. Two examples are provided, one showing the topology morphing and another showing the group morphing.