A method to evaluate and calculate the mobility of a general compliant parallel manipulator

A compliant parallel manipulator (CPM), is a kind of compliant mechanism characterizes a complicate topological structure and multiple degrees of freedom. As one of the kinematic characteristics of a CPM, the mobility of a CPM become complicate compared to its rigid-counterpart. In order to describe such a complicate kinematic characteristic of a CPM, "primary mobility of a compliant parallel manipulator" concept is proposed. By means of the screw theory, a method of quantifying the primary mobility of the CPM is investigated under the ground that the compliance matrix of the manipulator should be calculated primarily. By using this method, the primary mobility of two typical compliant parallel manipulators, one is a planar 3-RRR CPM and the other a spatial 3-RRPR CPM, is addressed respectively. This proposed method is also instructive for analyzing the instantaneous mobility of a general degenerate-DOF parallel manipulator or a Parallel Kinematic Machine (PKM).