Singularity and Controllability Analysis of Parallel Manipulators

Abstract This paper presents a study of kinematic and force singularities and their relationship to the controllability of planar and spatial parallel manipulators. Parallel manipulators are classified according to their degrees of freedom, number of output Cartesian variables used to describe their motion and the number of actuated joint inputs. The singularities in the workspace of a parallel manipulator are studied by considering the force transformation matrix which maps the forces and torques in joint space to output forces and torques in Cartesian space. The uncontrollable regions in the workspace of the parallel manipulator are obtained by deriving the equations of motion in terms of Cartesian variables and by using techniques from Lie Algebra. We show that when the number of actuated joint inputs is equal to the number of output Cartesian variables, and the force transformation matrix loses rank, the parallel manipulator is uncontrollable. For the case of manipulators where the number of joint inputs is less than the number of output Cartesian variables, if the constraint forces and torques (represented by the Lagrange multipliers) become infinite, the force transformation matrix loses rank. Finally, we show that the singular and uncontrollable regions in the workspace of a parallel manipulator can be reduced by adding redundant joint actuators and links. The results are illustrated with the help of numerical examples where we plot the singular and uncontrollable regions of parallel manipulators belonging to the above mentioned classes.