Novel XY Compliant Parallel Manipulators for Large Displacement Translation With Enhanced Stiffness

A novel XY compliant parallel manipulator (CPM) and a spatial double three-beam module both with distributed compliance are first proposed for large range of translation. Then, an improved XY CPM is proposed by combining the above XY CPM and a spatial double three-beam module in parallel. The normalized analytical models are further presented for the novel XY CPM, double three-beam module and improved XY CPM. It is shown that the improved XY CPM has the following merits: (1) large range of motion, constrained parasitic error motion, output-decoupling, maximal actuation isolation and minimal lost motion; and (2) large out-of-plane stiffness and no friction with base. The improved XY CPM may also be used as a building block to construct new spatial CPMs.