Design and forward kinematics of the compliant micro-manipulator with lever mechanisms

This paper presents the forward kinematics of a five-bar compliant micro-manipulator. To overcome the limited displacement of such a flexure-based mechanism driven by piezoelectric actuators, lever mechanisms are utilized to enlarge the working range. The mechanical design of the micro-manipulator is firstly described. Mathematical formulations for the five-bar mechanism are described and the solutions are developed to decide the end-effector position in Cartesian space. The amplification factor of the lever mechanism is also derived based on the analytical solution of the four-bar linkages. The velocity of the end-effector is obtained by differentiating the forward position kinematic equation, and the local mobility index of the five-bar compliant mechanism is determined and analysed. Based on linearization of trigonometric functions and constant Jacobian matrix, numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the performance of the five-bar compliant manipulator and to determine the optimal geometric parameters for the configuration. The comparisons between the exact solution and simplified methodologies are conducted. Experiments are carried out to validate the established model and the performance of the developed micro-manipulator. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.