A calibration procedure for reconfigurable Gough-Stewart manipulators

• Published in: Mechanism and machine theory Vol. 152; p. 103920
• Main Authors: Russo, Matteo, Dong, Xin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2020
• Subjects: Calibration; Gough-Stewart; Hexapod; Kinematics; Parallel manipulators; Robotics; Calibration; Parallel manipulators; Hexapod; Gough-Stewart; Robotics; Kinematics
• ISSN: 0094-114X; 1873-3999; 1873-3999
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2020.103920

•A calibration procedure for a reconfigurable Gough-Stewart parallel manipulator is proposed.•Geometrical identification is achieved through distance measurements.•A general mathematical model for calibration is introduced.•The calibration procedure is validated on a reconfigurable robot. This paper introduces a calibration procedure for the identification of the geometrical parameters of a reconfigurable Gough-Stewart parallel manipulator. By using the proposed method, the geometry of a general Gough-Stewart platform can be evaluated through the measurement of the distance between couples of points on the base and mobile platform, repeated for a given set of different poses of the manipulator. The mathematical modelling of the problem is described and a numeric algorithm for an efficient solution to the problem is proposed. Furthermore, an application of the proposed method is discussed with a numerical example, and the behaviour of the calibration procedure is analysed as a function of the number of acquisitions and the number of poses.