A New Class of Locally Decoupled Gough-Stewart Platform Manipulators

This paper analytically finds a new, significantly more general class of locally decoupled 2p - U (P) under barS, parallel manipulators encompassing and expanding several earlier classes. Its closed form solution leads directly to simple analytic formulas for the system eigenvalues in terms of geometric design parameters. To illustrate the power of the theory, the new methods are used to re-design an actual manipulator currently in use on the International Space Station. Unlike the existing manipulator, the new design is dynamically decoupled and isotropic.