Reachable workspace determination for a spatial hyper-redundant manipulator formed by several parallel manipulators

Abstract

Solving the reachable workspaces of spatial hyper-redundant manipulators (SHRMs) formed by serially connected parallel manipulators is an important and challenging work. This study addresses the issue on reachable workspaces and establishes a novel CAD-VBbased workspace determination system for determining the reachable workspaces of SHRMs. The reachable workspace determination of a novel (3-RPS)+(3-SPR)+(3-RPS) SHRM, a triple delta-type SHRM, and a novel (3-RRS)+(3-SPR)+(3-RRS) SHRM shows the generality and effectiveness of the proposed approach. The system proposed in this study can contribute to reachable workspace analysis for SHRMs.