Workspace Determination and Representation of Planar Parallel Manipulators in a CAD Environment

This paper presents a new method, based on a geometrical approach, for the total workspace determination, characterization and analysis of planar parallel manipulators. The geometrical algorithm proposed for total workspace computation is implemented in a CAD environment. This paper illustrates the effectiveness of such a method in robot design process. Examples of total workspace determination of several types of planar parallel manipulators are presented.