High-Precision Absolute Pose Sensing for Parallel Mechanisms

A parallel mechanism’s pose is usually obtained indirectly from the active joints’ coordinates by solving the direct kinematics problem. Its accuracy mainly depends on the accuracy of the measured active joints’ coordinates, the tolerances in the active and passive joints, possible backlash, axes misalignment, limb deformations due to stress or temperature, the initial pose estimate that is used for the numerical method, and the accuracy of the kinematic model itself. Backlash and temperature deformations in the active joints especially hinder high-precision applications as they usually cannot be observed. By implementing a camera module on the base platform and an array of fiducial tags on the moveable manipulator platform of a parallel mechanism, a highly accurate, direct, and absolute pose measurement system can be obtained that can overcome those limitations. In this paper, such a measurement system is proposed, designed, and its accuracy is investigated on a state-of-the-art H-811.I2 6-axis miniature hexapod by Physik Instrumente (PI) GmbH & Co. KG.