Design and Analysis of a New 3DOF ActiveType ConstantForce Compliant Parallel Stage This paper presents the design, analysis and testing of a novel threedegreeoffreedom (3DOF) compliant parallelkinematic active constantforce stage. The active constantforce property enables a large travel and constant driving property, which is enabled by introducing symmetrical bistable flexure hinges. The folded flexure mechanism is adopted to guide the driving input and to balance the stiffness of the stage to zero. In addition, leaf flexure hinges are employed to decouple the crossaxis motion of the 3DOF parallel stage. Analytical modeling is conducted to evaluate the stage performance. To verify the performance of the constantforce property and motion decoupling, finiteelement analysis simulation study is carried out. By minimizing the fluctuation of the constantforce value, design optimization of the stage parameters is implemented with multiobjective genetic algorithm. Moreover, a prototype is fabricated for demonstration of the proposed concept design.

Design of LowProfile Compliant Transmission Mechanisms Robotic origami design allows creating mesoscale robotic systems and mechanisms not limited by degrees of freedom, miniaturization and assembly downsides of conventional transmission mechanisms. However, unlike the traditional rigid approaches, robotic origami application has been limited by the complex deformation and kinematics of the compliant joints and actuation based on active materials or conventional electric motors. To generalize their application at mesoscale requires a combination of the predictability of traditional rigid kinematics and the manufacturing flexibility of robotic origami. Here we present a study of conventional transmission mechanisms, including a slidercrank and camfollower, made in quasi2D form by selective machining and stacking of multiple layers of composite material with minimal assembly. Owing to a compliant design powered by lowprofile piezoelectric motors, our 5.3 mm thick and lightweight mechanisms transmit rotational motion to translational movements in and outofplane. We develop analytic models that we validate in terms of force and motion output on our prototypes.