Development of a parallel kinematic motion simulator platform

A six degrees-of-freedom (DOF) parallel kinematics machine (PKM) applicable to the motion simulation of hazardous chemicals transportation is developed in this paper. According to actual requirements of the motion simulation, a detailed analysis has been carried out including the issues of kinematics analysis and prototyping. Based on a full conceptual mechanical design, the kinematics analysis is performed, which is focused on inverse kinematics modeling, workspace determination, singularities analysis, etc. Moreover, a PKM prototype system is developed based on a series of aforementioned analysis. Finally, the preliminary experiments have been performed, which validate the effectiveness of the proposed system. While the primary goal of this research is aimed at simulating the motion of hazardous chemicals transportation, the concept and approach outlined can be extended to a variety of applications.