Analysis and CAD tools for parallel manipulators |
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The theoretical studies carried out in the laboratory have led to the development of
visual interactive analysis tools which facilitate the study of planar,
spherical and spatial parallel manipulators.
These tools allow the geometric parameters to be varied at will
and allow the workspace, the singularity loci and other properties such as the stiffness
and the dexterity to be obtained interactively.
They allow trajectories to be carried out by controlling the
Cartesian or articular coordinates. The user can also
visualize different assembly modes and branches (solutions
to the direct and inverse kinematic problems).
Fig. 1: Example of an interactive graphic environment CAD tool
for parallel manipulators. Click on the image to enlarge.
First designed more than ten years ago on Sun workstations,
several versions of these analysis tools have been developed since, the most recent
version running on Windows XP and Linux.
Note that a specific version
for the analysis of flight simulators
was developed for the company
CAE Electronics Ltd.
The following figures show the results obtained with
the software.
Fig. 2: Workspace boundary and dexterity curve
in the plane for a spherical manipulator with prismatic actuators.
Fig. 3: Workspace of the
Gough-Stewart platform. The workspace boundary is determined using an analytical expression
obtained from a geometric analysis. The calculation takes but a few
milliseconds.
Fig. 4: 3 Dimensional workspace for a
spherical manipulator with prismatic actuators.
Fig. 5: Superposition of the workspace (green curves) and the
singularity loci (red curves) for the Gough-Stewart platform.
This superposition indicates that singularities are
present in the workspace. Tools have been developed
in the laboratory to detect the
presence of singularities in the workspace and provide a guaranteed answer. Note also
that the workspace and singularity loci are determined analytically.
The calculation and display are carried out in but a few
milliseconds.
Poster
A poster was prepared in 2002 for the analysis
software for parallel manipulators. This poster can be
downloaded by clicking on the PDF file below.
Software Tool for the Analysis, Design and Visualization of Robots (820 kb)
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