Abstract: A convenient and practical method for Stewart platform calibration, which is called cocktail method, is presented. In this method, the structure error Jacobian matrix is automatically constructed based on forward kinematics, and generalized coordinates concordant with measuring apparatus is adopted. This method allows to use different kinds of common measuring apparatus or the combination of them in the course of Stewart platform calibration, so the special equipment for multi-freedom measuring is unnecessary. Some problems about this calibration method are discussed in detail, such as：the construction and solution for the structure error matrix, the coupling of the error, the weighting for different structure error, the processing for new added measure items etc.

Key words: Accuracy, Calibration, Parallel mechanism, Stewart platform