Design and kinematic analysis of the wire parallel mechanism for a robot pose measurement

This paper presents a wire parallel mechanism designed and manufactured for a robot pose measurement which can be used for a robot calibration. It consists of six parallel links using wires. The position and orientation of a robot are obtained from the wire lengths measured in the wire parallel mechanism. The complex nonlinear equations of the forward kinematics of a parallel mechanism are solved by using the numerical method (Newton-Raphson method), and the unique solution is determined from a geometric configuration of the designed mechanism. Through the experiments, it is verified that the developed mechanism can measure a full pose of a robot and has an accuracy of ±0.05 mm, ±0.1° in the position and orientation, respectively. In conclusion, it can be used effectively for measuring of a robot pose with low cost and effort