A Novel Kinematic Calibration Method for a 3DOF Flexure-based Parallel Mechanism

This paper presents a novel calibration strategy for a 3DOF flexure-based parallel manipulator to overcome weaknesses and embrace merits of existing approaches. An algorithm so called simplex method is developed for the purpose of calibrating this manipulator by means of a camera-based data acquisition system. Calibration is performed according to the inverse kinematic model method. The Simplex method algorithm doesn´t identify directly the errors of geometry parameters, but finds the most appropriate control model taking all the errors into account, thus can improve the moving accuracy of the end-effector sharply. In the calibration process, matrix regrouping method is introduced to obtain the most appropriate control model. After getting the control model experimentally, verification experiments utilizing a laser interferometer have also been conducted to prove the effectiveness of this novel calibration method