Determination of Identifiable Parameters and Selection of Optimum Postures for Calibrating Hexa Slide Manipulators

Kinematic calibration enhances absolute accuracy by compensating for the fabrication tolerances and installation errors. Effectiveness of calibration procedures depends greatly on the measurements performed. While the Cartesian postures are measured completely, all of the geometric parameters can be identified to their true values. With partial pose measurements, however, few geometric parameters may not be identifiable and effectiveness of the calibration results may vary significantly within the workspace. QR decomposition of the identification Jacobian matrix can reveal the non-identifiable parameters. Selecting postures for measurement is also an important issue for efficient calibration procedure. Typically, the condition number of the identification Jacobian is minimized to find optimum postures. This paper investigates identifiable parameters and optimum postures for four different calibration procedures - measuring postures completely with inverse kinematic residuals, measuring postures completely with forward kinematics residuals, measuring only the three position components, and restraining the mobility of the end-effector using a constraint link. The study is performed for a six degree-of-freedom fully parallel HexaSlide type paralle manipulator, HSM. Results verify that all parameters are identifiable with complete posture measurements. For the case of position measurements, one and for the case of constraint link, three parameters were found non-identifiable. Optimal postures showed the same trend of orienting themselves on the boundaries of the search space.