Type Synthesis and Characteristic Analysis of a Family of 2-DOF Rotational Decoupled Parallel Mechanisms

It is widely used for the rotational parallel mechanism in the field of spatial orientation. While owing to the existence of coupling, the forward kinematic solution and the control of the general rotational parallel mechanism are especially difficult. If decoupling can be realized, the kinematic analysis of the mechanism will be very simple. Presently, the research of the parallel mechanism is focused on the inverse solution and structure optimization, and there is a lack of rotation decoupled parallel mechanisms (DPMs). So this paper proposes a family of 2 degree of freedom (DOF) rotational DPMs based on the four-bar linkage mechanism, and performs a characteristic analysis. This family of DPMs is composed of a moving platform, a fixed base and three limbs. Taking U_RU_PU DPM as an example, the motion feature of this DPM is analyzed with the constraint screw method, and its mobility is calculated by using the Modified Kutzbach-Grübler criterion. The inverse and forward displacement problems of the proposed parallel mechanism are solved. The decoupled feature of the proposed parallel mechanism is validated by the deduction of the expression of the Jacobian matrix. Three kinds of singularity conditions of this DPM are discussed, and the atlases of the output parameter concerning different geometric parameters are plotted with the theory of the physical model of the solution space. The proposition and characteristic analysis of the novel rotational DPMs in this paper should be useful for further research and application of the parallel mechanisms.