A General Formula of Degree-of-Freedom for Parallel Manipulators and Its Application Available to Purchase

This paper presents a new DOF formula for mechanism Its main feature is that the calculation of mobility has a single value for a given mechanism without the set of constraint equations, each of parameters in the formula can be correctly determined by simple symbol operation. The formula shows the map relationship between DOF and topological structure of a mechanism. It is embodied in the following aspects: (1) Dimension type: so that topological structure of a mechanism can be represented by symbols. (2) Orientation and location characteristic matrix: so that rank of a mechanism can be calculated by symbolic operation. (3) Orientation and location characteristic equation of serial mechanism and its symbolic operation. (4) Orientation and location characteristic equation of parallel mechanism and its symbolic operation. (5) The DOF calculation based on orientation and location characteristic equations of serial and parallel mechanisms. The DOF formula presented in this paper has already been used for topological analysis and synthesis of parallel mechanisms and its advantages has been proven.