Minimizing Energy Consumption of Parallel Mechanisms via Redundant Actuation

This paper shows that redundant actuation can reduce the energy consumption of parallel mechanisms, in some cases by a considerable margin. A theoretical analysis for the energy-saving mechanism is elucidated, and an energy consumption model for a servo-motor system is proposed. Our hypothesis is experimentally verified with a widely used two degree of freedom parallel mechanism design driven by three actuators. Experimental results show that redundant actuation can reduce the electrical energy consumption of the actuators by up to 45% compared to the corresponding nonredundantly actuated version of the mechanism.