Kinematic feature analysis of a 6-degree-of-freedom in-parallel manipulator for micro-positioning surgical

This paper presents a kinematic analysis of the parallel manipulator developed for micro-positioning application that requires high control bandwidth and high precision. The manipulator is a class of in-parallel platforms with 3 PRPS (prismatic-revolute-prismatic-spherical) joints chain geometry. The main advantage of this manipulator, compared with the typical Stewart platform type, is the ability to produce pure motion. The purpose of this paper is to develop an efficient kinematic model which can be used for real-time control and to propose systematic design methods that considers the existence conditions of the forward kinematic solution, singularity, manipulability, and resistivity. A series of simulations was carried out to show the kinematic characteristics and performance of the mechanism. The proposed manipulator has potentials in a wide range of applications from micro-surgery robots to a highly dextrous wrist mechanism of assembly robots