Modeling and experimental study of a novel 3-RPR parallel micro-manipulator

We propose a novel planar micro-manipulator, which uses a 3-RPR parallel mechanism. The micro-manipulator is characterized by parallel mechanism, monolithic and compliant structure and piezoelectric (PZT) actuation. The structure and characteristics of the 3-RPR micro-manipulator are presented and the relationships between actuation displacements, driving forces, PZT inputs and the end pose are derived. Based on the derived model, the micro-manipulator workspace is analyzed. To increase the accuracy of the prototype, an experimentally calibrated open-loop model is proposed. Finally, we carried out experiments on planar translational and rotational trajectories to demonstrate the prototype performance. The result shows the high accuracy of the proposed micro-manipulator and its promising application prospects in micro/nano-engineering.