Evaluation of force/torque transmission quality for parallel manipulators

Performance evaluation is one of the most important issues in the analysis and design of parallel manipulators. The internal forces and torques in parallel manipulators contribute to manipulating the end-effectors and resisting the external loads. In this work, we propose a transmission index to evaluate the force and torque transmission quality of parallel manipulators. The index is normalized and used to analyze the exactly constrained parallel manipulators, based on the transmission matrix spanned by transmission wrench screws (TWSs). Furthermore, the index is applied to parallel manipulators with different degrees of freedom (DOF) in order to illustrate and validate the proposed approach and index. Finally, a typical parallel manipulator is selected to address the comparison analysis between different indices, which demonstrates that the proposed index, possessing respective merits, could be complementary to other existing indices.