The forward kinematics problems of 3-branched planar parallel robots have been studied extensively in the literature. The polynomial approach is one of the best ways to find all the solutions to kinematics problems. However, it is usually not easy to reduce a kinematics problem to a univariate polynomial, and tangent half-angle formulae are usually used to do this task. The disadvantage of using tangent of half angle is that the solutions where the angle equals pi cannot be found from the polynomial. In this paper, the forward kinematics problems of 3-branched planar parallel robots are classified and their polynomials are found without using tangent half-angle formulae. It is shown that there are sixteen different types of possible forward kinematics problems of 3-DOF 3-branched planar parallel robots, including 6 types that the authors have not been found in the literature. For each type of problem, a univariate polynomial is found. The variable is either the cosine of the rotational angle of the moving platform or a coordinate of the reference point of the moving platform. Illustrative examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. It is shown that the proposed approach is effective even when the polynomial in tangent of half angle is ineffective.