Preliminary Design and Analysis of the 3-UCU Parallel Mechanism

Parallel kinematic machines (PKMs) have been widely studied in the past, but the design and analysis of these mechanisms are still challenging. In this paper, we show that the use of an original linear-angular transmission allows the design of a compact and rigid 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) PKM with only three limbs. The proposed 3-UCU architecture has partially decoupled kinematics, which simplifies its control. This paper highlights some interesting properties of the proposed design through its analytically developed kinematic and static models.