Lan Zhaohui

Ye Zhonghe

College of Mechanical Engineering   and Automation,

  Fuzhou University,

Fuzhou 350002, China

Abstract: The dexterous workspace is of significant importance in design of a planar manipulator. To determine the dexterous workspace of a planar 3-DOF parallel manipulator, the auxiliary linkages are constructed with the reference point of the moving platform as the fixed hinge. If the reference point lies in the dexterous workspace, the moving platform should be able to rotate around the reference point by the definition of the dexterous workspace and the platform becomes the crank in the auxiliary linkage. Based on the Grashof criteria for the auxiliary linkages, the conditions for the reference point to lie in the dexterous workspace are derived and the boundary of the dexterous workspace can then be drawn in a simple graphical method. Different examples are given to verify the effectiveness of the method and meanwhile the possible separation of the dexterous workspace is analyzed.