On the development of hybrid planar manipulators

Parallel robotic manipulators have been studied by many researchers over the past few years. They generally lead to a higher load-carrying capacity and a better accuracy than serial manipulators. Hence, they can be very useful in some applications involving high-performance dynamics or the manipulation of heavy loads. On the other hand, parallel manipulators are also known to have a rather small workspace. In an effort to try to combine the advantages of serial and parallel manipulators, planar hybrid manipulators are discussed in this paper. Hybrid manipulators consist of a series of parallel robotic modules. After introducing this concept, the direct and inverse kinematic problems associated with this type of manipulator are solved and the general kinematic model is presented. Velocity equations are also derived. Finally, workspace determination and experimental implementation are briefly addressed and will be the subject of future work