Parallel Mechanisms of the Multipteron Family: Kinematic Architectures and Benchmarking

This paper is a contribution to an invited session on the benchmarking of parallel mechanisms. The aim of the session is to compare different existing designs and prototypes of parallel mechanisms using a common set of benchmarking criteria. First, the kinematic architectures of parallel mechanisms of the multipteron family are presented. In addition to the tripteron and the quadrupteron, the pentapteron, a five-degree-of-freedom (dof) parallel mechanism is introduced. Then, the benchmarking criteria are applied to the prototypes of the tripteron (3-dof) and the quadrupteron (4-dof) prototypes. Although the tripteron and quadrupteron parallel mechanisms have been presented elsewhere, their properties, highlighted by the benchmarking analysis presented here are revealed for the first time.