Abstract: The design of a manipulator is one the important issues in the field of robots. Based on the theory of the physical model of the solution space, the design of the planar 2-DOF parallel manipulators with actuation redundancy is discussed. The physical model of the solution space for the manipulators is established. And the atlas for the workspace of the manipulators is plotted. The atlas is very useful for the design of the manipulators with respect to workspace index. The method can also be applied to the design of other manipulators.

Key words: Mechanical design Physical model of the solution space Performance atlases, Parallel manipulators