Development of a Five-Bar Parallel Robot With Large Workspace

Five-bar planar parallel robots for pick and place operations are always designed so that their singularity loci are significantly reduced. In these robots, the length of the proximal links is different from the length of the distal links. As a consequence, the workspace of the robot is significantly limited, since there are holes in it. In contrast, we propose a design in which all four links have equal lengths. Since such a design leads to more parallel singularities, a strategy for avoiding them by switching working modes is proposed. As a result, the usable workspace of the robot is significantly increased. The idea has been implemented on an industrial-grade prototype and the latter is described in detail.