Spatial Isotropy Analysis of Generalised Rotation-Symmetric Gough-Stewart platforms

As the traditional Stewart platform can't achieve spatially isotropy, this thesis first derives several novel spatially isotropic variants with three horizontal links based on the traditional Stewart platform by analysing the Cartesian stiffness matrix. Due to the effective workspace of the Stewart platform is affected by several factors, this thesis proposes a methodology which can clearly demonstrate the constant-position and constant-orientation workspaces and determine combinations of the free parameters to achieve the largest collision-free and singularity-free workspace. Finally, in order to evaluate the deviation from spatial isotropy, three novel methods for evaluating the deviation from stiffness isotropy are proposed.