View Chapter

Chapter 18 — Parallel Mechanisms

Jean-Pierre Merlet, Clément Gosselin and Tian Huang

This chapter presents an introduction to the kinematics and dynamics of parallel mechanisms, also referred to as parallel robots. As opposed to classical serial manipulators, the kinematic architecture of parallel robots includes closed-loop kinematic chains. As a consequence, their analysis differs considerably from that of their serial counterparts. This chapter aims at presenting the fundamental formulations and techniques used in their analysis.

R4 robot

Author  Sébastien Krut

Video ID : 53

This video demonstrates the R4 robot, a 100 g parallel robot.

Tripteron robot

Author  Clément Gosselin

Video ID : 54

This video demonstrates a 3-DOF decoupled translational parallel robot (Tripteron). References: 1. X. Kong, C.M. Gosselin: Kinematics and singularity analysis of a novel type of 3-CRR 3-DOF translational parallel manipulator, Inte. J. Robot. Res. 21(9), 791-798 (2002); 2. C. Gosselin: Compact dynamic models for the tripteron and quadrupteron parallel manipulators, J. Syst. Control Eng. 223(I1), 1-11 (2009)