Kinematics analysis, design, and control of an Isoglide3 Parallel Robot (IG3PR)

The paper presents a novel structure of the Isoglide3 Parallel Robot (IG3PR), as an effective robotic device with three degrees of freedom manipulation. The IG3PR manipulator offers the characteristics, advantageous relative to the other parallel manipulators (light weight construction), while on the other hand alleviates some of the traditional weaknesses of parallel manipulators, (extensive use of spherical joints and coupling of the platform orientation and position). The presented IG3PR robot employs only revolute (rotary) and prismatic (sliding) joints to achieve the translational motion of the moving platform. The pivotal advantages of the presented parallel manipulator are the following: all of the actuators can be attached directly to the base; closed-form solutions are available for the forward and inverse kinematics; and the moving platform maintains the same orientation throughout the entire workspace. In addition to these comparative improvements, the paper presents an innovative user interface for high-level control of the Isoglide3 parallel robot. The novel IG3PR was verified and tested, and results in MATLAB, Simulink, and SimMechanics were presented.