Optimal Mechatronics Design and Control of a 3-PRS Robotic Platform for Vertigo Diagnosis

In this paper, a 3-PRS (Prismatic, Revolute, Spherical) parallel robotic platform is designed, built, and instrumented, in order to provide a cost-effective tool for human balance assessment, vertigo diagnosis, and rehabilitation. The desired motions for dynamic posturography have been considered. Thus, the platform is designed to perform 2 rotational motions to produce sagittal tilt in the anteroposterior (AP) plane and frontal tilt in the mediolateral (ML) plane, in addition to the vertical movement. In order to reach an optimal design of the mechanism considering the workspace and dexterity as the main performance criteria, different optimization techniques have been used. These optimization algorithms have been compared in order to find the optimal geometric design parameters of the platform.