Eureka: a new 5-degree-of-freedom redundant parallel mechanism with high tilting capabilities

This paper introduces Eureka, a new parallel mechanism providing five motions: three translations plus two rotations. This device is able to reach high tilting angles (/spl plusmn/90/spl deg/ about a first given axis and a whole revolution about the following axis). This is due to actuation redundancy and to the specific traveling plate. Kinematic models are derived. Due to its particular shape the forward geometrical model is also derived easily. A plot of its well conditioned workspace is given. Practical designs, free of self-collisions, are shown.