Design and Analysis of a Novel Schönflies Motion Parallel Robot with Full Cycle Rotation

Abstract Due to the complex structures of multi-limbed parallel robots, conventional parallel robots generally have limited workspace, complex kinematics, and complex dynamics, which increases the application difficulty of parallel robot in industrial engineering. To solve the above problems, this paper proposes a single-loop Schönflies motion parallel robot with full cycle rotation, the robot can generate Schönflies motion by the most simplified structure. The novel Schönflies motion parallel robot is a two-limb parallel mechanism with least links and joints, and each limb is driven by a 2-degree of freedom (DOF) cylindrical driver (C-driver). The full cycle rotation of the output link is achieved by “…R-H…” structure, where the revolute (R) and helical (H) joints are coaxial. Mobility, kinematics, workspace and singularity analysis of the novel Schönflies motion parallel robot are analyzed. Then, dynamic model is formulated based on the principle of virtual work. Moreover, a pick-and-place task is implemented by the proposed Schönflies motion parallel robot and a serial SCARA robot, respectively. The simulation results verify the correctness of the theoretical model. Furthermore, dynamics performances of the proposed Schönflies motion parallel robot and a serial SCARA robot are compared, which reveal the performance merits of the proposed Schönflies motion parallel robot.