Analysis and dimensional synthesis of the DELTA robot for a prescribed workspace

This paper deals with an optimal dimensional synthesis method of the DELTA parallel robot for a prescribed workspace. The objective function is based on the mathematical concept of the power of a point with respect to bounding constraint surfaces. A genetic algorithm based method was used to solve this problem. The proposed method is simple and was shown to be effective in finding the dimensions of the DELTA robot having the smallest workspace containing a prespecified region in space. These dimensions were also determined in the case where the user defines a safety region, to avoid points in the prescribed workspace being on the boundary of the DELTA robot's actual workspace. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.