Design of a Hybrid Serial-Parallel Robot for Multi-Tasking Machining Processes (ICCAS 2005)

This paper presents a new hybrid serial-parallel robot(HSPR), which has six degrees of freedom driven by ball screw linear actuators and motored joints. This hybrid robot design presents a compromise between high rigidity of fully parallel manipulators and extended workspace of serial manipulators. The hybrid robot has a large, singularity-free workspace and high stiffness. Therefore, the presented kinematic structure of the hybrid robot is particularly suitable for multi-tasking machining processes such as milling, drilling, deburring and grinding. In addition to the machining processes, the hybrid robot can be used for welding, fixturing, material handling and so on. The study on design of the hybrid robot is performed. A kinematic analysis and mechanism description of the hybrid robot with six-controlled degree of freedom is presented. In the virtual design works by DADS, workspace and force analysis are discussed. A numerical model is treated to demonstrate our analysis and to determine the range of permissible extension of the struts. Also, we determine some important design parameters for the hybrid robot.