Optimal design of a redundant spherical parallel manipulator

A new kinematic design of a parallel spherical wrist with actuator redundancy is presented. A special feature of this parallel manipulator is the arrangement of co-axial actuators which allows unlimited rotation about any axis inside a cone-shaped workspace. A detailed kinematic analysis has shown that actuator redundancy not only removes singularities but also increases workspace while improving dexterity. The structure optimization has been performed with a global dexterity criterion. Using a conditioning measure, a comparison with a non-redundant structure of the same type was performed and shows that a significant improvement in dexterity has been obtained.