Kinematics analysis of a novel all-attitude flight simulator

To overcome the kinematic singularity limitation of simulator, which is unavoidable in a three-axis architecture, an all-attitude flight simulator in a four-axis architecture is proposed. The simulator can always provide 3DOF motion by applying redundant manipulator mechanism. For direct kinematics of the manipulator, a dual-Euler method is adopted to solve the expressions of attitude angles; thus computation singularity of all-attitude angles is overcome. For inverse kinematics of the manipulator, pseudo-inverse gradient projection method is used to obtain optimal velocity solution. Then, based on dynamic control method, optimal position solution is obtained. The proposed inverse kinematics algorithm can achieve desired attitudes, as well as can avoid kinematics singularity and axis angle limits. The simulation results show that the kinematic performance of the four-axis all-attitude flight simulator is superior to that of a three-axis simulator.