SUMMARYThe aim of this paper is to show how it is possible to obtain for the 5R planar parallel manipulator the complete workspace associated with each solution of the direct kinematic problem or assembly mode. The workspaces associated with the different inverse kinematic problem solutions or working modes are joined and the robot moves from one to another without losing the control. An exhaustive analysis of the complete workspace and singular positions of the 5R planar parallel manipulator with two active joints is presented. Furthermore, application of these principles to path planning will be explained.

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Educational software for the kinematic analysis of planar and spatial mechanisms is presented in this article. This general-purpose kinematic software has been developed as a complement to Machine Theory lectures. The different modules integrated in the software compute and analyse various kinematic entities, which enable an advanced student to investigate the characteristics of a mechanism. ß

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In mechanism design and in the particular case of the parallel manipulator, most optimization problems involve simultaneously optimizing more than one objective function. In this paper, a method to identify Pareto-optimal solutions for the design of low-mobility parallel manipulators is presented. A 4-degree-of-freedom symmetric parallel manipulator for Schönflies-motion generation is taken as a case study. The design goals used are workspace volume and manipulator dexterity based on a dispersion weighted Frobenius norm. In addition, an expression for energy per cycle has been defined for different types of trajectory to evaluate the power drive. Finally, the set of Pareto-optimal solutions of the design parameters are represented in the design parameter space.