Kinematic Analysis and Variation of Leg Length of a Parellel Manipulator on Triangular, Hexagonal and Octagonal Platform

The paper presents a detailed analysis of three shapes of parallel manipulator also called as Stewart platform. In a parallel manipulator, the end effector is attached to a movable plate that is supported in-parallel by a numbers of actuated links. These are suitable for applications in which high speed, high positioning accuracy and fast dynamic response are required. However, despite these advantages, this type of manipulator has a major drawback of their restricted workspace. In this work a positional analysis has been done on three types of platforms having triangular, hexagonal and octagonal shapes of the Stewart platform. Simulation of these three different shapes of platform has been visualized using Matlab. For validating the results variation in leg length of each leg is plotted against the angle when the platform centre is made to move in a circular trajectory about the z axis. This variation has been simulated for all three shapes of the platform using Matlab.