Multi-position Dimensional Synthesis of a Spatial 3-RPS Parallel Manipulator

This paper presents dimensional synthesis of a 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) spatial 3-revolute-prismatic-spherical (RPS) parallel manipulator. Tsai and Kim ((2003) ASME J. Mech. Des., 125, pp. 92-97) have shown that the dimensional synthesis can be carried out for at the most six prescribed positions and orientations of the moving platform. The method of synthesis is modified (least-square technique) to make it possible to synthesize the 3-RPS manipulator for any number of positions and orientations of the moving platform. The effectiveness of the modified method of synthesis is demonstrated by considering an example for ten-position synthesis. The modified method of synthesis is an approximation method.