Robotic Stewart Platform

A Stewart platform is a type of parallel robot that incorporates six prismatic actuators. These actuators are mounted in pairs to the mechanism's base, crossing over to three mounting points on a top plate. Objects placed on the top plate can be moved in the six degrees of freedom in which it is possible for a freely-suspended body to move. These correspond to the three linear movements x, y, z (lateral, longitudinal and vertical), and the three rotations pitch, roll, & yaw.

The Stewart platform design is extensively used in flight simulation, particularly in the so-called full flight simulator for which all 6 degrees of freedom are required. In this role, the payload is a replica cockpit and a visual display system, normally of several channels, for showing the outside-world visual scene to the aircraft crew that are being trained.

The robotic Stewart platform shown in the video was developed as a final year project. It has been fabricated in ABSplus material using a 3D printer, and employs 6 r/c servos (driven by an SSC-32 controller) as actuators for the prismatic joints. A program written in Matlab is used to calculate the platform's inverse kinematics and send via RS-232 the appropriate commands to the SSC-32, in order to achieve the desired position/orientation for the object mounted on the top plate.


2013 Final year project by Kalantzis S. Spiros

Robotics and Automation Laboratory
Mechanical Engineering Dept.
Technological Educational Institute of Crete
(Heraklion, Greece).

Project supervisor: Dr. J. Fasoulas