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Mechanism and Machine Theory 43 (2008) 754770

Mechanism and Machine Theory

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Topology of serial and parallel manipulators and topological diagrams

Xiaoyu Wang, Luc Baron *, Guy Cloutier
Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal, Department of Mechanical Engineering, C.P. 6079, Succ. Centre-Ville, Montreal, QC, Canada H3C 3A7 Received 3 November 2006; received in revised form 2 May 2007; accepted 15 May 2007 Available online 12 July 2007

Abstract This paper deals with manipulator topology. The term topology was rst introduced into robotics to characterize the kinematic structure of a manipulator without reference to its dimensions. Its dimension-independent aspect does not pose a considerable problem to planar manipulators, but makes it no longer appropriate to describe spatial manipulators especially spatial parallel manipulators, because such important properties as the degree of freedom of a manipulator and the degree of mobility of its end-eector as well as the nature of the mobility are highly dependent on some dimensional elements. In order to address this fundamental issue in kinematic synthesis, we introduced essential constraints into the concept of topology through the analysis of representative architectures, proposed a topological representation which provides a better correspondence between the representation and the intended manipulators, a necessity for topological synthesis and documentation. Introducing the essential constraints can also improve the eciency of some synthesis methods. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Manipulator; Topology; Geometry; Representation; Diagram

1. Introduction As far as the kinematics is concerned, a mechanism is a kinematic chain with one of its links designated as the base and another as the end-eector. A manipulator is a mechanism with all or some of its joints actuated. Driven by the actuated joints, the end-eector and all links undergo constrained motions with respect to the base [1]. A parallel manipulator is a mechanism whose end-eector is connected to its base by at least two independent kinematic chains [2]. The early works in the manipulator research mostly dealt with a particular design; each design was described in a particular way. With the number of designs increasing, the consistency, preciseness and conciseness of topological description of manipulators become more and more problematic. To describe how a manipulator is kinematically constructed, no normalized term and denition have been

Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 514 340 4711x4744; fax: +1 514 340 5867. E-mail address: luc.baron@polymtl.ca (L. Baron).

0094-114X/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2007.05.005

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proposed. The words architecture [3], structure [4], topology [5], and type [6,7] all found their way into the literature, describing kinematic chains without reference to dimensions. However, the kinematic properties of spatial manipulators are highly sensitive to some dimensional elements. The problem is that with the original denition of the term topology (the term topology is preferred here to other terms), manipulators of the same topology are often too dierent to even be classied in the same category. It is therefore necessary to take into account some dimensional elements when dealing with topology. Words used to dene kinematic details are equally diverse. Parameter [8], dimension [9,10] and geometry [11] are among the terms used to this end. As for the kinematic representation of parallel manipulators, one can hardly nd a method which is adequate for a wide range of manipulators and commonly accepted and used in the literature. However, in the classication [12,13], comparison studies [14,15] (equivalence, isomorphism, similarity, dierence, etc.) and manipulator kinematic synthesis, an eective kinematic representation is essential. This work is aimed at identifying and introducing essential geometry elements into topology and proposing a new topological representation accordingly. The representation should work appropriately for most of the manipulators and be as precise and concise as possible. It should also be adaptable to facilitate automatic kinematic synthesis. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, some basic concepts and denitions are presented, the importance of geometric constraints in determining the basic kinematic properties are discussed. The concepts of kinematic composition, essential constraints, topology, and geometry are introduced in Section 3. In Section 4, the kinematic representations are reviewed and their limitations identied. Based on the review and the analysis of geometric constraints, a topological diagram is proposed. Topological diagrams of representative manipulators are presented in Section 5. How the eciency of kinematic synthesis can be improved by introducing essential constraints is discussed in Section 6. 2. Preliminary Some basic concepts and denitions about kinematic chains are necessary to review as a starting point of our discussion on topology and topological representation. A kinematic chain is a set of rigid bodies, also called links, coupled by kinematic pairs. A kinematic pair is, then, the coupling of two rigid bodies so as to constrain their relative motion. We distinguish upper pairs and lower pairs. An upper kinematic pair constrains two rigid bodies such that they keep a line or point contact; a lower kinematic pair constrains two rigid bodies such that a surface contact is maintained [16]. A joint is a particular mechanical implementation of a kinematic pair [17]. As shown in Fig. 1, there are six types of joints corresponding to the lower kinematic pairs spherical (S), cylindrical (C), planar (E), helical (H), revolute (R) and prismatic (P) [18]. Since all these joints can be obtained by combining the revolute and prismatic ones, it is possible to deal only with revolute and prismatic joints in kinematic modeling. Moreover, all these joints can be represented by elementary geometric elements, i.e., point and line. To characterize links, the notions of simple link, binary link, ternary link, quaternary link and n-link were introduced to indicate how many other links is connected to a link. Similarly, binary joint, ternary joint and n-joint indicate how many links are connected to a joint. A similar notion is the connectivity of a link or a joint [19]. These basic concepts constitute a basis for kinematic analysis and kinematic synthesis. For kinematic analysis, the kinematic description of a mechanism includes basic information and parameters. The basic information is which link is connected to which other links by what types of joints. This basic information is referred to as structure, architecture, topology, or type, respectively, by dierent authors. This basic information alone is of little interest, because the kinematic properties of the corresponding mechanisms can vary too much to characterize a mechanism. This can be demonstrated by the single-loop 4-bar mechanisms shown in Fig. 2. Without reference to dimensions, all mechanisms shown in Fig. 2 are of the same kinematic structure but have very distinctive kinematic properties and therefore are used for dierent applications mechanism a: generates planar motion; mechanism b: generates spherical motion; mechanism c: is a Bennett mechanism [20], while mechanism d: permits no relative motion at any joints. Fig. 3 shows an example of parallel mechanisms having the same kinematic structure mechanism a: has 3 degrees of freedom (DOFs) whose end-eector has no mobility; mechanism b: has 3 DOFs whose end-eector has 3 degrees of mobility (DOMs)

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Prismatic (P)

Cylindrical (C)

Revolute (R)

Helical (H)

Spherical (S)

Planar (E)
Fig. 1. Lower kinematic pairs.

Fig. 2. 4-Bar mechanisms of dierent geometries.

Fig. 3. 3-PRRR parallel mechanisms.

in translation; mechanism c: permits no relative motion at any joints. A particular mechanism is thus described, in addition to the basic information, by a set of parameters which dene the relative position

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and orientation of each joint with respect to its neighbors. For complex closed-loop mechanisms, an often ignored problem is that certain parameters must take particular values in order for the mechanism to be functional and have the intended kinematic properties. More attention should be payed to these parameters which play a qualitative role in determining some important kinematic properties of the mechanism. For kinematic synthesis, not only do the eligible mechanisms have particular kinematic structures, but also they feature some particular relative positions and orientations between certain joints. If this particularity is not taken into account when formulating the synthesis model, a great number of mechanisms generated with the model will not have the required kinematic properties and have to be discarded. In Section 3, we investigate the special joint dispositions and give a new denition of the term topology by introducing the essential constraints. 3. Topology Since the 1960s, a very large number of manipulator designs have been proposed in the literature or disclosed in patent les. The kinematic properties of these designs were studied mostly on a case by case basis; characteristics of their kinematic structure were often not investigated explicitly; the constraints on the relative joint locations which are essential for a manipulator to meet the kinematic requirements were rarely put into the kinematic representation. Constraints are introduced mainly to meet the functional requirements, to simplify the kinematic model, to optimize the kinematic performances, or from manufacturing considerations. These constraints can be revealed by investigating the underlying design ideas. For a serial manipulator to generate planar motion, all its revolute joints need to be parallel and all its prismatic joints should be perpendicular to the revolute joints. For a serial manipulator to generate spherical motion, the axes of all its revolute joints must be concurrent [21]. For a parallel manipulator with three identical legs to produce only translational motion, the revolute joints of the same leg must be arranged in one or two directions [22]. A typical example of simplifying the kinematic model is the decoupling of the position and orientation of the end-eector of a 6-joint serial manipulator. This is realized by having three consecutive revolute joint axes concurrent. A comprehensive study was presented in [23] on the inverse kinematic solutions of 6-joint serial manipulators. The study reveals how the inverse kinematic problem is simplied by making joint axes parallel, perpendicular or intersect. Optimizing the kinematic performance also gives rise to special relative joint locations. Isotropic parallel manipulators having orthogonal actuated joint axes proposed in [24,25] are examples of this kind. In summary, these special constraints are the special relative joint locations, i.e. parallelism, perpendicularity, intersection, coplanarity, etc. To facilitate the kinematic analysis, kinematic synthesis, classication and comparison studies of manipulators, the terms kinematic composition, essential constraint, topology, geometry and their denitions are proposed as follows: the kinematic composition of a manipulator is the essential information about the number of its links, which link is connected to which other links by what types of joints and which joints are actuated; the essential constraints are the minimum conditions for a manipulator of given kinematic composition to have the required DOF and DOM; the topology of a manipulator is its kinematic composition plus the essential constraints; The geometry of a manipulator is a set of constraints on the relative locations of its joints which are unique to each of the manipulators of the same topology. Hence, topology also has a geometrical aspect such as parallelism, perpendicularity, coplanar, and even numerical values and functions on the relative joint locations which used to be considered as geometry. By our denition, geometry no longer includes relative joint locations which are common to all manipulators of the same topology because the later are the essential constraints and belong to the topology category. A manipulator can thus be much better characterized by its topology.

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4. Topological diagrams 4.1. Topological representation review The basic notions about link and joint introduced in Section 2 were used to describe manipulator kinematics. With these notions, the general spatial arrangement of links and joints of a manipulator can be described with ease. For example, the kinematic chain associated with a serial manipulator is constructed with binary links, two simple links and binary joints; while that associated with a parallel manipulator is composed of binary links, two multiple links and binary joints. The limitation of such description is obvious since the information about the joint types and which joints are actuated can not be provided without lengthy notations. Alphanumeric representation, 3-UPU or 3-RRR for example, may be the most eective one for kinematic composition, which was widely used in the literature. In general, the number indicates the number of identical kinematic chains, the sequence of upper case letters indicates the joint types along the kinematic chain and the actuated joint is identied by an underline. One of the more visual representation methods is the kinematic diagram. A kinematic diagram is a drawing of a mechanism showing its essential elements in simplied form with graphical symbols (Fig. 4). Although a great deal of eort has been made to normalize the graphical symbols for kinematic diagrams [27,26,28], the practice in the literature is just far from normalized. Similar to the kinematic diagram, the kinematic layout graph (Fig. 5) was proposed in [29]. With the kinematic layout graph, each joint is represented by an uppercase letter indicating the joint type surrounded by a rectangle; joints carried by the same link are connected by a line. The kinematic layout graph or its variants (Fig. 6) can be found in a number of recent publications. The common problem with the above kinematic representations is the poor correspondence between the representation and the intended manipulators. One kinematic diagram or layout graph may correspond to many manipulators with quite dierent kinematic properties.

Revolute

a b c d

Prismatic

Cylindrical

Spherical
Fig. 4. Kinematic joint symbols [26].

Joint name

Representation Passive joint Actuated joint

Revolute

R P
Fig. 5. Layout graph symbols [29].

R P

Prismatic

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R3 0 R1 1 R2 2 R7

3 6

R4 4 R6 R5 5

Fig. 6. Layout graph symbols [19].

Structural schema

Graph

Functional schema

Fig. 7. Structural schema, graph, and functional schema.

For planar mechanisms, there exist three similar representations, i.e., structural schema, graph, and functional schema (Fig. 7). The graph representation proposed in [30,31] is based on an abstract kinematic representation similar to the symbolic representation of chemical compound. With graph representation, the vertices denote links while edges denote joints. To distinguish dierent joints, the edges can be labeled or numbered. Since a graph can be easily represented by matrices, automatic synthesis algorithms can be implemented and kinematic chains can be systematically enumerated using graph theory and combinatorial analysis. When used with spatial mechanisms, the graph representation suers from the same drawbacks as the kinematic diagram and the kinematic layout graph. For spatial manipulators, joint and link locations are often so complex that perspective views and section views have to be used to represent the kinematic chains. Although the perspective views and section views are simplied as much as possible, the special features of the joint locations, parallelism and perpendicularity for example, can hardly be recognized by anyone not familiar with spatial mechanism. The topology features and geometry features can not be distinguished without complementary notations. A new representation of layout graph with graphical symbols for geometric constraints was proposed in [32]. Only one example of this representation was given, whether it is suitable for a wide range of manipulators remains to be seen. DenavitHartenberg notation [8] and the initial conguration matrix [22] were used for implicit topological representation when emphasis was put on geometric synthesis and visual representation could be compromised. In summary, the existing kinematic representations are only suitable for kinematic composition or kinematic geometry. There is a lack of topological representation. 4.2. Kinematic composition Taking the basic ideas of graph and layout graph, we propose that the kinematic composition be represented by a diagram having the graph structure so as to be eventually adapted for automatic synthesis. The joint type is designated as an upper case letter, i.e., R for revolute, P for prismatic, H for helical, C for cylindrical, S for spherical and E for planar. Actuated joints are identied by a line under the corresponding joint. The letters denoting joint types are placed at the vertices of the diagram, while the links are represented by edges. But there is a problem for non serial mechanisms. If a link carries more than two joints, then this link corresponds to more than one edge. From the diagram, edges corresponding to one link can not be identied and the fact that no motion is permitted between them is not reected. A simple way to solve this problem, while keeping the graph structure, is the use of an arrow at the edge end. Each joint has two joint elements, to which element a link is connected is indicated by the presence or absence of the arrow. Any link connected to the same joint element is actually rigidly attached and no relative motion is possible. ! R ! R ! R ! is a serial mechanism while ! R M R M R or RRR is a single link having three revolute joints. In

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Physical manipulator

Diagram

Fig. 8. Kinematic composition of a planar 3-RRR parallel manipulator.

this way, the diagram always has a graph structure. The kinematic composition of a planar parallel manipulator is shown in Fig. 8. The most left column represents the base carrying three actuated revolute joints while the most right column the end-eector. The end-eector is connected to the base by three identical kinematic chains composed of three revolute joints respectively. It is noteworthy that a very dierent manipulator shown in Fig. 9 has exactly the same kinematic composition. The diagram must bear additional information in order to appropriately represent the topology. 4.3. Essential constraints Essential constraints are the relative locations between lines. Constraints on relative joint axis locations can be summarized as six and only six possible situations, which are depicted in Fig. 10. Superimposing the essential constraint symbols on the kinematic composition diagrams shown in Figs. 8 and 9, we get the diagrams shown in Figs. 11 and 12. We can see that the topology of the planar parallel manipulator is fully represented by the diagram. The diagram shown in Fig. 13 still does not reect the fact that two joint axes intersect the third joint axis at the same point. In order to characterize the relative situations of non-adjacent joint axes, we introduce subscripts and superscripts into the diagram. Axes of the joints with the same subscript are concurrent while those with the same superscript are parallel. Figs. 13 and 14 with subscripts and superscripts. 4.4. Simplied diagram For the purpose of representing mechanisms of a subtopology, complex constraints are introduced and expressed by constraint vertices. A constraint vertex is indicated by a rectangle. Inside the rectangle, either a meaningful symbol or a notation index can be placed. Some symbols are proposed as shown in Fig. 15. An example is shown in Fig. 16.

Physical manipulator

Diagram

Fig. 9. Kinematic composition of a spherical 3-RRR parallel manipulator.

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Joint axes are not parallel and do not intersect; Joint axes are parallel and do not intersect; Joint axes are perpendicular and do not intersect; Joint axes intersect at an arbitrary angle; Joint axes intersect at zero angle or aligned; Joint axes intersect at right angle.
Fig. 10. Graphic symbols for essential constraints.

Fig. 11. Diagram of a planar parallel manipulator with essential constraints on the relative joint locations.

Fig. 12. Diagram of a spherical parallel manipulator with essential constraints on relative joint locations.

Some special constraints on relative locations of revolute joints can be found in a large number of manipulator designs, introducing the following complex joints can greatly simplify their representations. These complex joints are shown in Fig. 17, where the PI joint is proposed by Angeles [33]. Two examples are shown in Figs. 18 and 19. 4.5. Topological diagram The diagram containing information on both the kinematic composition and the essential constraints is referred to as topological diagram. A summary of topological diagram is given in the following paragraphs.

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Fig. 13. Diagram of a spherical parallel manipulator with constraints on relative non-adjacent joint locations.

Physical manipulator

Topological diagram
Fig. 14. Diagram of 3-UPU.

Coplanar Concurrent Intersect at equal angle Axes (points) forming the edges (vertices) of an equilateral polygon Equal link length
Fig. 15. Constraint complex symbols.

Physical manipulator

Diagram of a subtopology

Fig. 16. Diagram with constraint vertices.

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Two consecutive parallel revolute joints Three parallel revolute joints PI joint Tow revolute joints with general relative location Two intersecting revolute joints Two revolute joints intersecting at right angle Tree concurrent revolute joints Universal joint
Fig. 17. Complex joints.

Physical manipulator
Fig. 18. Diagram of delta [34].

Diagram

Fig. 19. Diagram of parallel manipulator proposed by [35].

A topological diagram has vertices and edges. There are joint vertices and constraint vertices. Joint vertices are marked by an upper case letter or a circled graphic symbol denoting a joint, while constraint vertices are indicated by a rectangle denoting special constraints on joints connected to it. Edges connecting joint vertices denote links. The leftmost edge corresponds to the base while the rightmost edge to the end-eector. Links have two kinds of extremities, i.e. with an arrow and without arrow. Links connected to the same joint element

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Fig. 20. Joint grouping priority order.

of a joint have the same kind of extremities pointing to this joint, they are rigidly attached. The ways to indicate the essential constraints are: (1) (2) (3) (4) superimpose graphical symbols on edges; add subscripts to joint vertices to indicate the concurrent joint axes; add superscripts to joint vertices to indicate which joints are parallel; add constraint vertices.

Joints can be grouped into complex joints to simplify the topological diagram. Actuated joints will not be grouped with non actuated joints. When dierent grouping is possible, the order from high priority to low priority is shown in Fig. 20. 5. Examples of topological diagrams 5.1. Serial manipulators Two examples are shown in Figs. 21 and 22.

Fig. 21. PUMA manipulator.

Fig. 22. A serial manipulator designed by Victor Scheinman.

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5.2. Parallel manipulators Three examples are shown in Figs. 2325.

Fig. 23. 4-DOF ight simulator by Koevermans et al.

Fig. 24. 5-DOF by Hesselbach et al.

Fig. 25. 6-DOF decoupled manipulator by Nabla, drawing by Merlet.

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6. Kinematic synthesis methodology There exist three major synthesis approaches for spatial manipulators. The rst one consists of three steps: (1) Determine the possible kinematic compositions; (2) For each kinematic composition, a parametrization is performed; (3) With some of the parameters as design variables, the search for suitable designs is performed. The choice of the design variables is usually done by resorting to experience and intuition. As shown in Section 2, given a kinematic composition, particular geometric constraints must be satised in order for the manipulator to have required kinematic properties. This approach inevitably suers from the poor correspondence between the suitable design space and the searched design space (illustrated in Fig. 26). With the second approach, synthesis based on screw theory or instantaneous kinematics for instance, the synthesis model is formulated as implicit functions with joint types and link geometries as unknowns. It is obvious that the synthesis can not be performed without the implication of all link geometries, making it not suitable for qualitative synthesis. The third approach is based on group theory. This approach is limited to kinematic chains whose displacements form a Lie group. The systematic analysis of the essential constraints can improve these synthesis approaches. Since the essential constraints are relative locations between lines or between points and lines, they can be easily formulated into the kinematic model. Only parameters which are not under the essential constraints are taken as design variables, a good correspondence between the intended manipulators and the synthesis model can therefore be achieved. With the kinematic compositions and essential constraints, qualitative synthesis can be performed. 6.1. Numerical topological representation To implement geometric and topological synthesis algorithms the topology of a serial kinematic chain composed of only revolute and prismatic joints is represented by 6 integers, i.e. n: number of joints. x0: kinematic composition. Its bits 0 to n 1 represent respectively the joint type of joints 1 to n with 1 for revolute and 0 for prismatic. x1: bits 0 to n 2 indicate respectively whether the axes of joints 2 to n 1 intersect the immediate preceding joint axis. x2: each two consecutive bits characterize the orientation of the corresponding joint relative to the immediate preceding joint with 00 for parallel, 01 for perpendicular, and 10 for the general case. x3: supplementary constraint identifying joints whose axes are concurrent. All joint axes whose corresponding bits are set to 1 are concurrent.

:all design space :searched design space

:eligible design space

Fig. 26. Illustration of design spaces.

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x4: supplementary constraint identifying joints whose axes are parallel. All joint axes whose corresponding bits are set to 1 are parallel. With this numerical representation, topological constraint can be imposed on a general kinematic model to carry out geometric synthesis to ensure that the search is performed in designs with the intended motion type. The binary form makes the representation very compact. No serial kinematic chain should have more than 3 prismatic joints, so all values for x0 of 6 joint kinematic chains take only 42B (byte) storage. Those for x1 take 31B while those for x2 243B. Without supplementary constraints which are applied between non adjacent joints, the maximum number of topologies is 316386 (some topologies, those with two consecutive parallel prismatic joints for example, will not be considered for topological synthesis purpose). All topologies without supplementary constraint can be stored in a list, making the walk through quite straightforward. Applying supplementary constraints while walking through the list provides a systematic way for topological synthesis. In the following sections, the main steps to search for geometries and topologies of parallel manipulators with certain characteristics are presented. 6.2. Isotropic design of translational parallel manipulators of a given topology Parallel manipulators (PM) composed of three identical sub-chains of the topology shown in Fig. 27 can be a translational PM [36,15,37]. The numerical topological representation of this sub-chain is n = 5. x0 = 111112. x1 = 01012. x2 = 000100012. x3 = 110012. x4 = 000002.

Under these explicit constraints, the geometries of the PM can be generated. Applying stochastic search method, similar results as presented in [25] are obtained. An interesting geometry with continuous isotropic congurations is shown in Fig. 28.

Fig. 27. A sub-chain topology of translational parallel manipulators.

Fig. 28. PM with isotropic continuum.

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6.3. Topological synthesis examples The motion of the end-eector (EE) is characterized in its displacement tangent space. The motion type is then the structure of this space. If this space is represented by range(GE) where GE is a 6 n matrix with n as the degree of freedom of the EE, then the motion type can be characterized by the ranks of the upper three rows (GEU) and the lower three rows (GEL) of GE. Let range(Gi) represent the EE motion under the constraints of the ith sub-chain, then rangeGE rangeG1 \ rangeG2 \ \ rangeGn 1

Given the motion type of the EE, range(Gi) can be derived by using either Eq. (1) or the methods presented in [3638]. The synthesis problem is then transformed into the search for appropriate sub-chain topologies which is done by walking through the topology list and applying supplementary constraints. Figs. 2932 show some

Fig. 29. 2-DOF translational PM.

Fig. 30. PM with 1 DOF in translation and 3 DOF in rotation.

Fig. 31. Spherical PM.

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y x

Fig. 32. Spherical PM.

examples. From the best knowledge of the authors, the topologies shown in Figs. 29 and 30 are new topologies. 7. Conclusion By introducing essential geometric constraints, kinematic chains of serial and parallel manipulators can be better characterized. This is essential for both topology synthesis and geometry synthesis. On the one hand, topology synthesis of spatial manipulator is no longer dimension-independent; most of the topology syntheses are actually the search for some special geometric constraints which play a key role in determining the fundamental kinematic properties. On the other hand, it is necessary to identify the essential constraints when performing geometry synthesis in order for the design space to correspond appropriately to the intended topology. The proposed topological diagram is comprehensive which enables the kinematic composition to be described precisely, essential constraints to be reected appropriately and the elements of geometry to be isolated completely from the topological representation. The graph structure makes it possible to implement computer algorithms in order to perform systematic enumeration, comparison and classication of serial and parallel manipulators. The topological diagram is also a useful tool for manual or automatic synthesis. It is highly exible and can be extended with ease by introducing new joint or constraint symbols. Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the nancial support of NSERC (National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada) under grants OGPIN-203618 and RGPIN-138478. References
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