Novel three-DOF reconfigurable spherical motion generator

A novel Reconfigurable Spherical Motion Generator (RSMG) is developed to provide continuous spherical motion and force transmission. Unlimited spherical motion is one of the challenges of flight simulators. RSMG is a prototype of flight simulator which achieves unlimited spherical motion. RSMG is a redundant parallel manipulator. There are four robotic arms attached onto the rotor surface in order to provide 3-DOF spherical motion. Every single robotic arm is reconfigurable such that singular configurations can be avoided by reconfigurability of RSMG. The conceptual design with concept-proof devices are built. The development of RSMG is presented including the problems solving in each prototypes. Direct and inverse kinematics are presented followed by singularity analysis of the mechanism. Dynamics of RSMG is presented. Actuation strategy is developed for the proposed manipulator to avoid serial singularity. RSMG is capable to avoid serial singularity and has potential to avoid parallel singularity based on the reconfigurability such that unlimited spherical motion can be achieved.