Optimal design of two, three and four legs 3-DOF planarparallel manipulators

In this paper, the optimal designs of three planar 3-DOF parallel manipulators with 4-RPR, 3-RPR and 2-RPR structures are compared. The optimization of the manipulators are performed based on dexterityindex, subject to constant orientation workspace. The optimizations are performed using particle swarmoptimizer with Semi-active congregation which improves the performance of PSO with passivecongregation. Finally, it is shown that the 4-RPR parallel manipulator has a better performance than 2-RPR and 3-RPR manipulators according to the dexterity index.

Keywords:

Manipulator , dexterity , optimization , semi-active congregation