Kinematic calibration of precise 6-DOF stewart platform-type positioning systems for radio telescope applications

The pose accuracy of a parallel robot is a function of the mobile platform posture. Thus, there is no a single value of the robot's accuracy. In this paper, two novel methods for estimating the accuracy of parallel robots are presented. In the first method, the pose accuracy estimation is calculated by considering the propagation of each error, i.e., error variations are considered as a function of the actuator's stroke. In the second method, it is considered that each actuator has a constant error at any stroke. Both methods can predict pose accuracy of precise robots at design stages, and/or can reduce calibration time of existing robots. An example of a six degree-of-freedom parallel manipulator is included to show the application of the proposed methods.