Design and Kinematic Analysis of a Novel 7-DoF Dual-Arm Parallel Manipulator for 3C Products Assembly

Based on the field research and analysis of the 3C (Computers, Communications, and Consumer Electronics) products assembly processes, this paper proposed a novel seven degrees-of-freedom (DoF) dual-arm parallel manipulator for 3C products assembly. The proposed manipulator is consists of two cooperating parallel manipulators (PMs) with less DoF, which are a 4-DoF 3T1R (T: translation, R: rotation) PM and a 3-DoF 3R PM. The proposed manipulator has a redundant rotational pitch motion (rotational motion around a horizontal axis). The analysis of the position and workspace of the proposed manipulator is discussed in detail. In addition, a prototype of the proposed manipulator has been developed. The mobility verification and a computer mouse assembly experiment based on the prototype are conducted. Experiment results show that the proposed 7-DoF dual-arm parallel manipulator can be a prospective candidate to accomplish the 3C assembly tasks.