Project Summary

The MiniPaR programme is a research programme launched in January 2004 with the duration of 24 months, cofunded by the MIUR, Italian Ministry for the University and the Research, in the framework of the COFIN2003 research actions.

Aims of the project are the design and prototyping of small size instrumental robots with parallel architecture (mini-PKMs) characterized by an overall volume of some cubic decimetres and a workspace volume of some cubic centimetres. Robotic devices for mini, milli and micro tasks deserve a growing interest today following the trend of miniaturization of products and functions. In this framework, several industrial and service tasks require accuracy, fastness and stiffness to be accomplished and robots with parallel architectures represent a valuable opportunity in the most of cases. 

However the scale-down process shows some problems often faced introducing technological solutions different from the traditional robotic solutions; i.e. the adoption of flexible joints in place of traditional conjugate pairs joints in order to avoid stick-slip problems.

The MiniPaR programme involves five research units belonging to five Italian university centres: the University of Brescia, the University of Catania, University of Genova, the Università Politecnica delle Marche and the Politecnico di Torino. The work is done in strict cooperation relying on synergy to get high value-added results.

Prototypes of the robots are in development and will be realized. A significant part of the work is also the development specific theoretic subjects, in particular in the fields of dynamic optimization and robot calibration.