A compliant parallel micromanipulator is a mechanism in which the moving platform is connected to the base through a number of flexural components. Utilizing parallelkinematics configurations and flexure joints, the monolithic micromanipulators can achieve extremely high motion resolution and accuracy. In this work, the focus was towards the experimental evaluation of a 3-DOF (Zθxθy) monolithic flexure-based piezodriven micromanipulator for precise out-of-plane micro/nano positioning applications. The monolithic structure avoids the deficiencies of non-monolithic designs such as backlash, wear, friction, and improves the performance of micromanipulator in terms of high resolution, accuracy, and repeatability. A computational study was conducted to investigate and obtain the inverse kinematics of the proposed micromanipulator. As a result of computational analysis, the developed prototype of the micromanipulator is capable of executing large motion range of ±238.5µm × ±4830.5µrad × ±5486.2µrad. Finally, a sliding mode control strategy with nonlinear disturbance observer (SMC-NDO) was designed and implemented on the proposed micromanipulator to obtain system behaviours during experiments. The obtained results from different experimental tests validated the fine micromanipulator's positioning ability and the efficiency of the control methodology for precise micro/nano manipulation applications. The proposed micromanipulator achieved very fine spatial and rotational resolutions of ±4nm, ±250nrad, and ±230nrad throughout its workspace.Note to Practitioners-Piezo-actuated precision positioning systems play an increasingly important role in the fields of micro/nano manipulation robots. They have the advantages of fine resolution, high accuracy, fast response speed, and large output displacement. However, such systems inherently exhibit vibration, hysteresis behaviors, and are affected by external disturbances that could cause oscillations and positioning errors. This study presents a robust control methodology implemented on a 3-DOF positioning system (Zθxθy), which is among the most prone system to be affected by existing disturbances. This control methodology is designed to improve the tracking performance in the presence of hysteresis nonlinearity, disturbances, and modeling errors. The effectiveness of the proposed control methodology is demonstrated by conducting a series of experiments. Due to the ease of implementation, the developed control methodology can be applied to other positioning systems as well.

Vehicular motion simulators have evolved to become an important contributor to major industries, including defense, aerospace, and vehicle manufacturing. During the past few decades, many eorts have been made towards developing robust, adaptive motion simulators with the highest level of delity and realism. Thus, it is important to recollect, in order to evaluate the current state of complex robotic systems, encouraging careful planning of further improvements in the future. This article focuses on the current motion simulators' structural designs and working principles alongside the currently developed motion control algorithms to achieve the highest delity. Furthermore, within the era of industry 4.0 and the fast-paced merging of technologies into key industries, some suggestions are made for future works which it is believed are worth investigating to provide robustness and adaptivity to the control of simulation systems, improving their delity and realism alongside reducing motion sickness experienced by the simulator operator.

A compact large-range six-degrees-of-freedom (six-DOF) parallel positioning system with high resolution, high resonant frequency, and high repeatability was proposed. It mainly consists of three identical kinematic sections. Each kinematic section consists of two identical displacement amplification and guiding mechanisms, which are finally connected to a limb. Each limb was designed with a universal joint at each end and connected to a moving stage. A computational model of the positioner was built in the ANSYS software package, hence, the input stiffness, output compliance, range, and modal analysis of the system were found. Furthermore, a monolithic prototype made of Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) was successfully manufactured by the 3D-printing process. It was actuated and sensed by piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) and capacitive displacement sensors, respectively. Finally, the performances of this proposed positioner were experimentally investigated. The positioning resolution was achieved as 10.5nm × 10.5nm × 15nm × 1.8µrad × 1.3µrad × 0.5µrad. The experimental results validate the behavior and capabilities of the proposed positioning system, and also verify the nanometer-scale spatial positioning accuracy within the overall stroke range. Practical applications of the proposed system can be expanded to pick-and-place manipulation, vibration-canceling in microsurgery/micro-assembly, and collaborative manipulators systems.