A novel geometrical approach to determining the workspace of 6-3 Stewart Platform Mechanism

This paper presents a novel methodology for the workspace analysis of 6-3 Stewart Platform Mechanism covering all possible leg configurations which need the forward kinematics consideration. The proposed methodology uses a geometrical algorithm to evaluate the position of the movable platform. In this algorithm, the entire achievable positions of the first vertex of the movable platform are defined by considering the constraints of the connected leg lengths and joint angles. The second vertex is determined geometrically by utilizing the linked legs length, and an inverse kinematics approximation gives possible locations for the third vertex. Although it includes the forward kinematics point of view, the suggested method does not require the use of highly nonlinear algebraic equations with multiple solutions and time-consuming iterations which entail good initial values.