Mechanism and actuation hybridization for a four degrees-of-freedom parallel manipulator

Performance is paramount to parallel manipulators. Improving the overall performance of parallel manipulator is the bridge to connect the academia and industry for the great development and real-world application of parallel manipulators. For the past research, scholars put more emphasis on optimizing the performance of parallel manipulators in different aspects, e.g. dimensional optimization, error calibration, trajectory planning. This research, a methodology which is called as System Hybridization is proposed to manage the performance of parallel manipulator in a higher level. Through a systematic method, the global capabilities of parallel manipulator can be significantly improved. A case study of a four degrees-of-freedom (DOF) parallel manipulator is proposed to well explain the proposed paradigm in the way of Mechanism Hybridization and Actuation Hybridization. It demonstrates that the hybrid actuation based on hybrid mechanism performs better than the mechanism with the identical actuators in term of stiffness in the main directions, which proves the proposed method is meaningful to improve the performance of parallel manipulator.