Analysis and Validation of a Flexible Planar Two Degrees-of-Freedom Parallel Manipulator With Structural Passive Compliance

Passive compliance plays an important role in robot pick-and-place manipulation where large interaction force will be produced in response to small misalignments. In this paper, the authors report on compliance analysis and validation of a novel planar pick-and-place parallel manipulator consisting of a flexible limb. In the proposed manipulator, a planar flexible parallelogram linkage, which is coupled with a rigid one, is introduced to connect the moving and the base platforms. Since the flexible parallelogram linkage is capable of producing large deformation in both the horizontal and the vertical directions, the end effector of the manipulator can generate wide-range motions because of the flexible links. An efficient approach to the large deflection problem of flexible links is used to precisely predict the kinetostatics of the manipulator. Then, a compensation algorithm to the structural deflection of the links can be developed to actively control the position of the parallel manipulator's end effector. The merit of the proposed flexible manipulator is its intrinsic passive compliance while performing pick-and-place tasks. A prototype is fabricated to conduct experiments for the validation of the proposed idea. The results show that the prototype has acceptable positioning accuracy, even when a large external load is exerted on its end effector. The compliance properties of the proposed flexible manipulator have also been verified in both the horizontal and the vertical directions.