Inverse dynamic analysis and linearisation of a high speed parallel mechanism

Inverse dynamic analysis of a three degree of freedom parallel mechanism driven by three electrical motors is carried out to study the effect of motion speed on the system dynamics and control input requirements. Availability of inverse dynamics models offer many advantages, but controllers based on real-time inverse dynamic simulations are not practical for many applications due to computational limitations. An off-line linearisation of system and error dynamics based on the inverse dynamic analysis is developed. It is shown that accurate linear models can be obtained even at high motion speeds eliminating the need to use computationally intensive inverse dynamics models. A point-to-point motion path for the mechanism platform is formulated by using a third order exponential function. It is shown that the linearised model parameters vary significantly at high motion speeds, hence it is necessary to use adaptive controllers for high performance.