The design of a novel parallel haptic device

A novel haptic device which is characterized by large workspace, high rigidity, simple kinematics and easy construction is presented. This device is a parallel mechanism which is composed of a base plate, three sub-chains, and a mobile plate. Each sub-chain is attached to the base plate through a pin joint and to the top plate through a spherical joint. The sub-chain is derived from and kinematically equivalent to a pantograph linkage but is redesigned to solve the difficult problem of motor-fitting. The spherical joint is of the ball-in-socket type, but has much larger workspace than its regular counterpart. The kinematics is analyzed, and the inverse kinematics analysis is performed with a geometric approach. The complete workspace is readily obtained with the spherical coordinate system searching method. The optimal value of the cone angle of the spherical joint is shown to be 100°.