FAST PARALLEL ROBOTS

This paper presents two parallel robots that have been recently designed. The first one is a 3-degree-of-freedom lightweight robot called DELTA and designed in Switzerland by EPFL. We give here the equations corresponding to different models of this robot: forward and inverse kinematics as well as inverse dynamics. The important feature of our method in deriving these models is to use a "good" set of parameters in order to simplify the equations. Based upon these considerations of simplicity, we have tried to extend the principle of the DELTA mechanical structure to a 6-degree-of-freedom parallel robot. We came up with a new design we called the HEXA. We present this robot and show that it should have the same dynamic capabilities as the DELTA, because, like this one, it can be built with light material and it can be easily modeled.