Conceptual development of a reconfigurable parallel robot

Today´s rapidly changing market demands and competitive industry requires timely reactions to market changes. The usage of reconfigurable systems permits a fast reaction to changes in a cost-effective manner. In this paper a new class of parallel reconfigurable robots is introduced. Configurations differ in their number of degrees of freedom. Aspects of topological reconfiguration are presented. Virtual models of the robots have been developed and presented in this paper for an early validation of theoretical consideration. Using these virtual models, the motion capabilities of the various configurations have been analyzed. Numerical results are presented at the end of the paper.