Planar Stewart Gough platforms with a type II DM self-motion (Q434317)

A Stewart Gough platform is a manipulator whose platform is connected to the base by six legs of variable length and with spherical joints on both ends. In general, only a discrete number of platform poses exists to given anchor points on base and platform and given leg lengths. An infinity of such poses is called a self-motion. Their classification is the topic of ongoing research to which this article contributes. It is well-known that there exists a one-parametric set of legs that can be added to the manipulator without changing the self-motions. The additional anchor points lie on planar cubics in base and platform, respectively. Upon replacing the six given legs with legs through the cubics' ideal points, one obtains a Stewart Gough platform that exhibits a self-motion at any given configuration. The author considers the case where this self-motion is of dimension two. Under weak regularity assumptions, the self-motions are characterized by algebraic equations. They turn out to be line-symmetric and are octahedral (the base and platform cubics split into three lines) or Schönflies motions (a full planar motion group plus translations orthogonal to the plane). The article concludes with a discussion of how these two motion types can be constructed from their algebraic equations.