Design of Miniature Hexapod
This was the project as a team effort during my Bachelor's Degree in India. Hexapod is a six-legged parallel manipulator. It basically consists of a base connected to the top through 6 parallel actuators. Hence the name hexapod. The top of the hexapod can be oriented to any configuration irrespective of the position of the base. This is achieved by manipulating the lengths and angle of inclination of the actuator legs. Multiple full sized hexapods are currently stationed at Bhabha Atomic Research Center (where we developed this project) as positioning devices to position a laser beam onto crystals, to study its material properties for atomic research. The full sized version has downsides of being cost intensive and difficulty in mobility. The miniature version that we designed is cheaper and mobile. Hence it can be used for precision low load application like surgery, weapon positioning, in assembly lines to orient position of parts, to name a few. We designed the hexapod using Universal Joints & Ball Screw Actuators as legs. The CAD was made in SOLIDWORKS & the kinematics was solved using MATLAB.
SOLIDWORKS | Mechanical Design | MATLAB | Electromechanical Design | Kinematics | ANSYS