Parallel Robots

Parallel robots are closed-loop mechanisms offering very good performance in terms of accuracy, rigidity and ability to manipulate large loads. Parallel robots have been used in a wide variety of applications ranging from astronomy to flight simulators and are becoming increasingly popular in the machine-tool industry. This book presents a synthesis of results on the possible mechanical architectures, analysis and synthesis of this type of mechanism. It is intended to be used by students (with over 100 exercises and numerous Internet addresses), researchers (with over 500 references and anonymous ftp access to the code of some algorithms presented in this book) and engineers (for whom practical results and applications are presented).