Practical Structural Design Approach of Multiconfiguration Planar Single‑Loop Metamorphic Mechanism with a Single Actuator

As a type of multiconfiguration mechanism that can operate in an under-actuated state,metamorphic mechanisms were proposed more than two decades ago and attracted significant interest.Studies on structural synthesis of metamorphic mechanisms tend to focus more on metamorphic techniques and the structural synthesis of source mechanisms for metamorphic mechanisms.By designing different constraint architectures of metamorphic joints,multistructures can be obtained from the same source metamorphic mechanism.To determine the constraint architectures of metamorphic joints and their different assembly combinations,a kinematic status matrix and a corresponding constraint status matrix are constructed based on the metamorphic cyclogram of a source mechanism.According to the equivalent resistance gradient model and the constraint status matrix,an equivalent resistance matrix for the metamorphic joints is proposed.A structural synthesis matrix of the metamorphic mechanism is then obtained from the equivalent resistance matrix by deducing the constraint form vectors of the metamorphic joints.Furthermore,a kinematic diagram synthesis of the source metamorphic mechanism of a planar single-loop metamorphic mechanism is proposed,which is based on only the 14 one-or zero-degrees-of-freedom linkage groups.The entire structural design method of a metamorphic mechanism is based on the structural synthesis matrix and is presented as a systematic process.Finally,the proposed structural design approach is illustrated by two examples to verify its feasibility and practicality.This study provides an effective method for designing a practical multi-mobility and multiconfiguration planar single-loop metamorphic mechanism with a single actuator.

METAMORPHIC MECHANISMSAND THEIR CONFIGURATION MODELS

The concept of metamorphic mechanisms is presented, configuration models and configuration transformations relating to a set of new matrix operations are discussed and proposed. The configuration of a metamorphic mechanism reflects the connectivity change in the mechanism during motions which results in mobility change and presents the characteristics of the mechanism which is discussed in various applications particularly in decorative artifacts. The characteristics is further investigated with mobility analysis.

Constraint and Mobility Change Analysis of Rubik’s Cube-inspired Reconfigurable Joints and Corresponding Parallel Mechanisms

The current research of reconfigurable parallel mechanism mainly focuses on the construction of reconfigurable joints.Compared with the method of changing the mobility by physical locking joints,the geometric constraint has good controllability,and the constructed parallel mechanism has more configurations and wider application range.This paper presents a reconfigurable axis(rA)joint inspired and evolved from Rubik’s Cubes,which have a unique feature of geometric and physical constraint of axes of joint.The effectiveness of the rA joint in the construction of the limb is analyzed,resulting in a change in mobility and topology of the parallel mechanism.The rA joint makes the angle among the three axes inside the groove changed arbitrarily.This change in mobility is completed by the case illustrated by a 3(rA)P(rA)reconfigurable parallel mechanism having variable mobility from 1 to 6 and having various special configurations including pure translations,pure rotations.The underlying principle of the metamorphosis of this rA joint is shown by investigating the dependence of the corresponding screw system comprising of line vectors,leading to evolution of the rA joint from two types of spherical joints to three types of variable Hooke joints and one revolute joint.The reconfigurable parallel mechanism alters its topology by rotating or locking the axis of rA joint to turn all limbs into different phases.The prototype of reconfigurable parallel mechanism is manufactured and all configurations are enumerated to verify the validity of the theoretical method by physical experiments.