Kinematic analysis and path planning of a new kinematically redundant planar parallel manipulator

SUMMARY In this work, the 3- RP RR, a new kinematically redundant planar parallel manipulator with six-degrees-of-freedom, is presented. First, the manipulator is introduced and its inverse displacement problem discussed. Then, all types of singularities of the 3- RP RR manipulator are analysed and demonstrated. Thereafter, the dexterous workspace is geometrically obtained and compared with the non-redundant 3- P RR planar parallel manipulator. Finally, based on a geometrical measure of proximity to singular configurations and the condition number of the manipulators' Jacobian matrices, actuation schemes for the manipulators are obtained. Different actuation schemes for a given path are obtained and the quality of their actuation schemes are compared. It is shown that the proposed manipulator is capable of following a path while avoiding the singularities.