A coordinate measuring machine with parallel mechanisms

Widely used in manufacturing industry, coordinate measuring machines(CMM) are traditionally designed with a serial structure, which is composed of a serial chain of three mutually perpendicular prismatic joints to achieve three degrees of freedom in motion. There exist some shortcomings such as error accumulation and low stiffness in this kind of structure. This paper introduces a CMM with a parallel structure, which is more accurate and robust compared to the serial one, and studies some important issues in designing and developing this type of CMM, including the closed-form forward and inverse solutions, workspace analysis, and system calibration.