Kinematic Optimal Design of 6-UPS Parallel Manipulator

Kinematic design of parallel manipulator based on optimal articular velocities is presented in this paper. For the same kinematic performance of end-effector, the required articular velocities should be as lower as possible. So the concept of velocity transformation factor, which reflects the magnitude of articular velocities, is proposed. Then, the optimal design problem is formulated to find a manipulator geometry that minimizes the global velocity transformation factor. Since the optimal design problem is a constrained nonlinear optimization problem without explicit analytical expressions, the genetic algorithm is applied to numerically solve the problem. A commonly-used Stewart-Gough platform is employed as an example to demonstrate the design procedure