IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ANALYTICAL INVERSE KINEMATICS SIMULATION METHOD FOR A 5-DOF PARALLEL MANIPULATOR

The simplicity of the kinematical calculation represents one of the main reasons for choosing a parallel manipulator. Similar to the case of a serial robot, the majority of studies concerning parallel robots use the Jacobian-based method to define the position and the posture of the end-effector. However, although the kinematical aspect of a parallel robot is simple, it will still prove costly if the inverse kinematics are calculated using the Jacobian-based method. Therefore, in this study, an analytical-based methodology was developed for calculating the inverse kinematics of a parallel robot. A simulation program based on the proposed algorithm was developed using Matlab. The simulation program, which is referred to as an Analytical Inverse Kinematics Simulation (AIKS), could be used to calculate the rotation of every actuator in order to achieve the required position. To ensure the implementability of the method, one test was performed using a complex trajectory. The result showed that the AIKS could be used to generate the degree of rotation of every actuator so as to achieve the required positioning of the end-effector. Further, to check the accuracy of the proposed model, two verification mechanisms were used. The results demonstrated that the proposed method is accurate. Moreover, the comparison test showed that the proposed method is cheaper in terms of the computational cost than the Jacobian method.