Abstract: Lion dance is a very popular and lively Chinese traditional art form. A robotic project in Singapore has been dedicated to the design and demonstration for similar traditional art forms using modern mechatronics technology. This paper deals with a novel six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) hybrid manipulator with high stiffness, high loading capability and high dexterity, mimicking the lion dancer’s upper body motions along with the lion head movements. The design of the hybrid manipulator consists of a 2-DOF torso structure in serial configuration and a 4-DOF dual arm structure in parallel configuration. The combined 6-DOF hybrid manipulator can support the weight and dynamics of the lion head during the lion dance performance. Forward kinematics of the manipulator has been formulated and visualized for design purposes. Inverse kinematics of the hybrid manipulator were analytically derived for real-time motion control. Based on the design and modeling, a complete hybrid manipulator has been fabricated, implemented into the robotic lion, and successfully demonstrated for real robotic lion dance performance.

Key words: Parallel mechanism, Hybrid manipulator, Kinematics analysis

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