Workspace Decomposition Based Dimensional Synthesis of a Novel Hybrid Reconfigurable Robot

A novel 5-axis hybrid reconfigurable robot named Tricept-IV, including one 4-degree-of-freedom (4DOF) hybrid module and one 2DOF end effector, is investigated. Compared with extensive research that has been pursued for the parallel kinematic machines such as Tricept, Sprint Z3 Head, and so on, the hybrid kinematic machines have not adequately been studied. This paper demonstrates a method of workspace decomposition applied in the dimensional synthesis of a 4DOF hybrid module, which is the underlying architecture of the newly invented robot. This paper starts with an introduction of the Tricept-IV robot. After dividing the 4DOF hybrid module into one position-orientation coupling (POC) subsystem and one position-feed (PF) subsystem, its workspace is decomposed into POC and PF subspaces accordingly, and then the inverse position problem may be solved by means of one prejudgment method. Furthermore, the Jacobian matrix of the POC subsystem is obtained by the screw theory so as to formulate its kinematic performance index. Finally, the dimensional synthesis based on workspace decomposition of the hybrid module is carried out by taking a global view of the dimensional synthesis of these two subsystems. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4001781]