Kinematics of the line-plane subassembly in Stewart platforms

Abstract When the attachments of ve legs in a Stewart platform are collinear on one side and coplanar on the other, the platform is said to contain a line-plane subassembly. This paper is devoted to the kinematics analysis of this subassembly paying particular attention to the problem of moving the aforementioned attachments without altering the singularity locus of the platform. It is shown how this is always possible provided that some cross-ratios between lines dened by points in the plane are kept equal to other cross-ratios between points in the line. This result leads to two simple motion rules upon which complex changes in the location of the attachments can be performed. These rules have interesting practical consequences as they permit a designer to optimize aspects of a parallel robot containing the analyzed subassembly, such as its manipulability in a given region, without altering its singularity locus. Index Terms Parallel manipulators, robot kinematics, ar-chitectural singularities, kinematics singularities, manipulator design. I