Cheope: A new reconfigurable redundant manipulator

This work presents a new reconfigurable parallel-serial hybrid manipulator that can reach 7 degrees of freedom as a whole. The architecture of the parallel part is modular and it can be configured to obtain for the mobile base 3 or 4 degrees of freedom, or 3 degrees of freedom with redundant actuation. The paper presents the new parallel kinematic structure, analyzing the singularities, the workspace and the benefits of the redundant configuration. Finally, the first experimental results are presented.