A New Seven Degrees-of-Freedom Parallel Robot With a Foldable Platform

This paper presents a new parallel robot with an integrated gripper. The grasping capability of the robot is obtained by a foldable platform that can be fully controlled by actuators located on the base of the seven degrees-of-freedom (DoF) parallel structure. This mechanism combines three key specificities in robotics which are compactness, rigidity, and high blocking forces. The paper presents the new structure, its kinematic modeling, and an analysis of its workspace and grasping force capabilities. In addition, a prototype is presented and tested in manipulation and insertion operations, which validates the proposed concept.