Forward kinematics of the general triple-arm robot using a distance-based formulation

The final publication is available at link.springer.comDistance-based formulations have successfully been used to obtain closure polynomialsfor planar mechanisms without relying, in most cases, on variable eliminations. The methods re-sulting from previous attempts to generalize these techniques to spatial mechanisms exhibit somelimitations such as the impossibility of incorporating orientation constraints. For the first time, thispaper presents a complete satisfactory generalization. As an example, it is applied to obtain a clo-sure polynomial for the the general triple-arm parallel robot (that is, the 3-RPS 3-DOF robot). Thispolynomial, not linked to any particular reference frame, is obtained without variable eliminationsor tangent-half-angle substitutionsPeer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft