Design of a 6-DOF compliant manipulator based on serial-parallel architecture

A novel dexterous 6DOF manipulator serially connected by two compliant parallel stages is presented in this paper. The upper stage is a 3-RPS mechanism and the lower one is a 3-RRR mechanism. In virtue of the method of the physical model of the solution space, optimal design of the lower stage has been accomplished. Then, the calibration of the lower stage is undergoing by means of an ultra-precision vision system. The experiment shows that the lower stage possesses workspace of 120 mum times 130 mum times 18mrad with the resolution of 50 nm, 50 nm, 18 arcsec, respectively. This manipulator is to be used as a fiber optics aligner