Dang

pp.347-358

A dodecapod is a one-section parallel manipulator which could be considered as an evolution of the wide-known hexapod, or the Stewart platform. The idea of a dodecapod was proposed by prof. S.N. Sayapin in 2012. In this article the authors consider one of the dodecapod’s functional capabilities: movement within a linear cylindrical tube of uniform and variable cross-sections. A design model of the dodecapod was presented in this paper along with propagation conditions for dodecapod’s movement within the tubes and the algorithms of changing the lengths of dodecapod’s rods, which make its movement possible. The presented results allow to draw a conclusion that a one-sectional parallel manipulator based on a dodecapod could be applied to creation of mechanisms for execution of technological operations in linear cylindrical tubes of uniform and variable cross-sections.

The aim of the work is to investigate kinematics of a single-section parallel “dodekapod” manipulator. The “dodekapod” is an extension of a hexapod and has 12 degrees of freedom. In the article, direct and inverse kinematic problems of the “dodekapod” were solved with the use of the Yaw, Pitch and Roll transformation method. Using matrix of transformation, one can express position and orientation of any plane in two ways: by a directed vector or by transformation parameters. The particle swarm optimization method (PSO) was applied to solving a direct kinematic problem. Results of this work subsequently are used to find the workspace of the “dodekapod”, and also to solve the problem of its dynamics.