An algorithm for the forward kinematics of general parallel manipulators

Forward kinematics has been studied mainly for parallel manipulators with planar faces. In this case the size of the set of equations from the inverse kinematics can be reduced from six to three and this last set can be combined into a polynomial in one variable. But this method cannot be extended to general parallel manipulators without planar faces. The author presents an algorithm for the forward kinematic of general manipulators and shows that the number of solutions is bounded by 352. A configuration with twelve solutions is presented.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>