Complete, minimal and continuous kinematic error models of perfect multi-dof joints for parallel manipulators

Kinematic error model plays an important role in improving the positioning accuracy of robot manipulators by kinematic calibration. In order to get a better calibration result, the error model should satisfy complete, minimal and continuous criteria. In order to meet the complete requirement, the multi degree-of-freedom (DOF) joints, such as universal or spherical joint in parallel robots, have to be regarded as serial chains formed by multiple independent single DOF joints, such that the manufacturing errors of these joints can be considered. However, several previous work found that these manufacturing errors for some parallel manipulators have little effect on the accuracy improvement. Besides, considering these kind of errors will cause the kinematics to be much more complicated. Therefore, under the assumptions of perfectly manufactured universal, spherical and cylinder joints, a complete, minimal and continuous (CMC) error model is presented in this paper. The identifiability of the kinematic errors of these multi-DOF joints are analytically analyzed. In order to verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method, a numerical simulation of kinematic calibration is conducted on a 6-UPS parallel manipulator. The calibration result is also compared to the one derived from the error model with 138 error parameters. Since the error model and calibration methods are described uniformly, it can be applied to most parallel manipulators.