Design of a new spatial 3-DOF parallel mechanism with application to a PDP TV mounting device

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new 3-DOF parallel mechanism for PDP TV mounting device with 2-rotation and 1-translation. The most important operational requirement of this device is that the device should support large weight of the PDP panel and be foldable to save the space between the PDP panel and the wall. An asymmetric parallel structure that has three kinematic chains with internal four-bar is proposed to meet such requirements. The special four-bar mechanism is foldable and supports large weight structurally, which allows employment of small-sized actuators for motion. The kinematic modeling and kinematic analysis was performed along with actuator sizing. Finally, this mechanism was developed and tested to show the effectiveness as the PDP TV mounting device. It is believed that this device is a successful commercialized parallel mechanism.