Four Novel Pick-and-Place Isoconstrained Manipulators and Their Inverse Kinematics

The four-degree-of-freedom (4-DoF) Schoenflies-motion (briefly termed X-motion) manipulator with the fast pick-and-place operation is essential for industrial assembly and packaging. For the development of this kind of industrial manipulator, we provide architectures and inverse kinematics of four X-motion isoconstrained parallel mechanisms with two limbs, C_u^uU_wH_w-//-C_v^vU_wH_w, C_uR_u^uU_hw-//-C_vR_v^vU_hw, C_uR_uPH_w-//-C_vR_vPH_w and C_uP^uU_hw-//-C_vP^vU_hw (R, P, H and C denote revolute, prismatic, screw and cylindrical pairs respectively; U indicates a universal joint). These novel manipulators are excerpted from numerous general architectural types of isoconstrained parallel generators of X-motion. In this work, their architectures and mobility are first elucidated in detail. With the help of the well-known D-H symbolic notations, their three translational and one rotational motion are comprehensively verified through the four-by-four coordinate transformation matrix approach. Inverse kinematic solutions of joint displacements of each manipulator are further established by using the matrix algebra method for the reference of potential applications.