Verification of the Kinematic Analysis of the 6-DOF Stewart Platform Manipulator

Abstract

Virtual modelling and simulation of robot-based systems provides decisiveadvantages not only in design but also in planning and the normal operation of suchsystems. In addition, kinematic modelling provides a powerful framework tounderstand the structure, mobility and adapt the specific characteristics of both serialand parallel manipulators. In this work, the position and orientation of the StewartPlatform parallel manipulator are required in order to find the leg lengths which isthe solution for the inverse kinematics problem. The lengths are automaticallycomputed with respect to a given orientation and position and hence the end‐effectorperforms a predefined trajectory in the task space. A virtual and mathematicalverification of the position analysis of a 6‐DOF Stewart platform was implementedby comparing different robot postures with the same position and orientation.SolidWorks and MATLAB are used to check the study and the robot motionsimulation. The results are discussed and an agreement between the two programs iscertainly obtained.