The Research On Reconfigurable Modular Parallel Micromanipulators

The reconfiguring modular manipulator is a kind of concept, which assembles different robots by universal modules according to especial missions. By the modular design, not only 3-6 degrees of freedom (DOF) Parallel Micromanipulators with decoupled structure is reconfigured, but also two technical problems in the traditional design are resolved: one of which is completely assembling robots can bring the big assembly errors and other of which is the monolithic design make the machining difficult.Based on the structure theory of parallel micromanipulators, a series of novel 3-6 DOF Parallel Micromanipulators are presented in this paper, and the integrative analysis of these structures is proposed. According to the special structure of this series of Parallel Micromanipulators, four types of modules are designed such as top platform module, static platform module, kinetic limb module, and active module, whose basic properties and characteristics are researched. The emphasis is drawn on the kinetic limbs module in the four modules. 3-6 DOF kinematics characters of kinetic limb are discussed, and nine kinetic limbs are established, which adopt elastic integrative design. Connection and orientation between modules is considered in the design of module.In this paper, kinematics analysis modules of the Reconfigurable Modular Parallel Micromanipulator are researched, which consists of position analysis module, velocity module, acceleration module, algorithm of Jacobin matrix, property index of velocity and acceleration which including decoupled character, isotropy, extremum of velocity and acceleration and so on.The characters of modular Parallel Micromanipulators are influenced by the geometry size of elastic P-joint and length of link in the kinetic limb modules. In this paper the size of flexible P-joint is designed on the ANSYS software. High linear degree of flexible P-joint is obtained in the range of micro-displacement. Relationship between the link length of kinetic limb module and end output of moving platform is analyzed by finite element (FE) simulation of solid module through the example of 3-PUU and 6-PUS Parallel Micromanipulators.