Abstract
This paper presents the design of a planar parallel manipulator with a pneumatic drive. Such manipulators are used in production lines for sorting, selecting, packing, and palletizing workpieces. This paper presents simulation studies of the designed manipulator in Matlab/Simulink software and using the SimMechanics library. A simple kinematics problem and an inverse kinematics problem were solved in order to carry out simulation studies of the designed manipulator. Simulation studies were also carried out on the dynamics of the manipulator using a mathematical model describing the physical phenomena occurring during the operation of the manipulator’s electro-pneumatic servo-drives. The main objective of the simulation study was to determine the manipulator working space and the possibility of positional control of the manipulator end-effector using a fuzzy logic controller.