Energy‐momentum conserving integration of parallel manipulators

In the framework of a rotationless formulation for multibody systems, we present an investigation of multibody mechanisms. The benefit of this kind of formulation is the design of energy‐momentum conserving integration schemes, which facilitate a stable numerical integration of differential algebraic equations governing the motion of open‐loop and closed‐loop systems. We introduce a coordinate augmentation technique for the incorporation of rotational degrees of freedom and subsequently perform a size‐reduction to lower the computational costs and to improve the numerical conditioning [1]. Furthermore the treatment of nonholonomic constraints is addressed [3]. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)