Kinematotropic 3-Cpu Parallel Robots : Extended analysis and reconfigurability aspects of a class of parallel kinematics machines

A parallel kinematics machine, or PKM, is a mechanism whose structure is usually made of a moving platform connected to a fixed base through a multitude of legs. In recent years, PKMs have attracted the growing attention of both the academic and industrial communities due to their potential applications. Indeed, if compared to serial mechanisms, PKMs own several advantages in terms of dynamics, accuracy and stiffness. These aspects motivated researchers to develop new kinematics architectures specialized to the realization of a limited number of tasks. The main objective of the research presented in this work, is to investigate the possibility to realize a reconfigurable multi-purpose parallel manipulator based on the 3-CPU joints architecture.