Kinematics of an offset 3-UPU translational parallel manipulator by the homotopy continuation method

For most parallel manipulators, the inverse kinematics is straightforward, while the direct kinematics is challenging. The latter requires the solution of a system of nonlinear equations. In this paper we use the homotopy continuation method to solve the forward and inverse kinematic problems of an offset 3-UPU translational parallel manipulator. The homotopy continuation method is a novel method which alleviates drawbacks of the traditional numerical techniques, namely; the acquirement of good initial guess values, the problem of convergence and computing time. The direct kinematics problem of the manipulator leads to 16 real solutions.