Internal singularity analysis of a class of lower mobility parallel manipulators with articulated traveling plate

This paper deals with a particular family of lower mobility parallel kinematic manipulators. The four degrees of freedom of the end-effector consist of three translations plus one rotation with a high tilting angle. Robots belonging to this family are first introduced, and a common parameterization is established. Then an extended kinematic model is proposed for this family of robots using a new Jacobian matrix. Relevant information about robot kinematic singularities, internal singularities, and possible end-effector motions can be obtained by resorting to this matrix. The efficiency of this method is proven by applying it to several traveling-plate architectures corresponding to already built robot prototypes. The results of the expected behavior are compared with the prototype´s real behavior. The goal of this paper is to show that internal (or constraint) singularities can occur in lower mobility parallel kinematic manipulators, and to underline the influence they have during the design stage.