Design of a novel 8-DOF Hexapod based Motion Platform

In motion simulation, motion platforms enable the simulation of forces and angular velocities acting on a person in a car or an airplane, for example. Other applications for motion platforms are, for instance, perceptual research or testing the dynamic behavior of mechanical structures. In this work, a novel motion platform is presented that consists of a hexapod with two additional degrees of freedom. A hexapod robot can perform highly dynamic movements, which is why high forces and torques act on objects mounted on it. The actuators of the additional axes must be designed in such a way that they provide sufficient drive torque for each movement of the hexapod to prevent slippage. By solving an optimization problem, joint trajectories were determined in which the drive torques become maximum. These torques can be used to select suitable drives. A similar optimization problem was used to determine load cases to perform a stress analysis of the entire structure on the hexapod using finite element simulation. To be able to move the motion platform along a Cartesian trajectory, a path planning algorithm is needed. In this work, a simple algorithm based on inverse kinematics is used, which was due to the hybrid and redundant structure of the system calculated using differential kinematics.