Semi-isotropically optimized Parallel Manipulator Design Issues: A Performance Comparison in view of Vibration Isolator Application

Semi-isotropically designed parallel manipulator based devices using identical actuators have been found to exhibit point isotropy in the working space. Although research is being carried out to find isotropic configuration of the parallel manipulators, the maximum achievable isotropy is only found through the recently proposed semi-isotropic design solution. In this paper a kinematic performance index based mapping of design variation about the semi-isotropically optimized design architecture has been illustrated. In addition a case of design optimization of Stewart platform based vibration isolator is considered for performance comparison. Finally results show that dual quaternion approach to achieve dimensionally homogeneous Jacobian matrix pertaining to the manipulator architecture optimization process does not turn up at global optimum.