An algorithm for the forward kinematics of general 6 D.O.F. parallel manipulators
Abstract
Forward kinematics has been studied mainly for parallel manipulators with planar faces. In this case the size of the set of equations from the inverse kinematics can be reduced from 6 to 3 and this last set can be combined into a polynomial in one variable of order 16. But this method cannot be extended to general parallel manipulators without planar faces for which there is no known results. We present here an algorithm for the forward kinemati of general manipulators and we show that the number of solutions is bounded by 1320. We present a configuration with these twelve solutions.