The octahedral manipulator revisited

Abstract

In most practical implementations of the Gough- Stewart platform, the octahedral form is either taken as it stands or is approximated. The kinematics of this particula r instance of the Gough-Stewart platform, commonly known as the octahedral manipulator, has been thoughtfully studied . It is well-known, for example, that its forward kinematics can be solved by computing the roots of an octic polynomial and its singularities have a simple geometric interpretation in te rms of the intersection of four planes in a single point. In this paper, using a distance-based formulation, it is shown how t hese properties can be derived without relying neither on variab le eliminations nor trigonometric substitutions. Moreover, thanks to this formulation, a family of platforms kinematically eq uiv- alent to the octahedral manipulator is obtained. Herein, tw o Gough-Stewart parallel platforms are said to be kinematica lly equivalent if there is a one-to-one correspondence between their squared leg lengths for the same configuration of their moving platforms with respect to their bases. If this condit ion is satisfied, it can be shown that both platforms have the same assembly modes and their singularities, in the configuratio n space of the moving platform, are located in the same place.