Evolutionary Design of Parallel Mechanisms

Evolutionary design is a process that initiates the generation of new concepts based on the morphological extension of current design patterns. This particular practice conceives a new mechanism and evolves its category by mapping certain features of an artifact to a new linkage. This book proposes a new design philosophy as practice of analogous design for creating parallel mechanisms. This new way of design imitates the collapsible motion of origami folds, generating novel architectures of parallel mechanisms with centralized motion. The book presents a new family of parallel mechanisms followed by screw-theory based mobility analysis, positioning and instantaneous kinematics, workspace and singular configuration analysis. Numerical examples and simulations are presented to demonstrate the new mechanisms. This work is addressed to professionals in Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, or students interested in gaining knowledge about design of parallel mechanisms.