Kinematic Analysis and Prototyping of a Partially Decoupled 4-DOF 3T1R Parallel Manipulator

A four-degree-of-freedom (DOF) 3T1R parallel manipulator is presented in this paper. This manipulator generates the family of so-called Schönflies motions, SCARA motions or 3T1R motions, in which the moving platform can translate in all directions and rotate around an axis of a fixed direction. The kinematic analysis of this architecture is presented, including the study of the constraint singular configurations, kinematic singular configurations, and the determination of the workspace. A prototype (the Quadrupteron) is also presented and demonstrated. The characteristics of the proposed prototype are (a) there is no constraint singularity, (b) its input-output equations are partially decoupled, (c) its kinematic singular configurations can be expressed using an equation in the angle of rotation of the moving platform and are thus easy to avoid at the design stage, and (d) its forward displacement analysis requires the solution of a univariate quadratic equation and can therefore be solved efficiently.