Hexapteron - The simplest six-DOF parallel robot

This video shows the very first movements of the Hexapteron, a unique six-Degree-of-Freedom (6-DOF) parallel robot with trivial inverse and direct kinematics. There's still a lot of work left..
The Hexapteron was invented by ‪@NicholasSeward‬ and its kinematic model was described for the first time in:
Seward, N., and Bonev, I.A., "A new 6-DOF parallel robot with simple kinematic model", 2014 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Hong Kong, China, May 31 - June 5, 2014.
What's unique about the Hexapteron is its kinematics: both its direct and inverse kinematic models have a single solution that is trivial to calculate. That's unseen for a 6-DOF parallel robot with six identical legs and no double or triple spherical joints. Most parallel robots have simple inverse kinematics but extremely complex direct kinematics. For example, the popular telescoping-strut hexapod can have up to 40 different real solutions to its direct kinematic problem.
The mechanical design of the Hexapteron prototype was made by ‪@echerchelanov‬ as part of his Ph.D. thesis at the ÉTS. The robot controller was designed by François Vadnais, technician at the ÉTS. The controller and the robot motors are from ‪@BeckhoffAutomation‬. The robot was machined and assembled at the ÉTS. Lastly, programing was done by a team of four undergraduate students at the ÉTS, as part of their single-semester capstone project.

[@echerchelanov]

It is awesome to see it alive! Great work guys. I really appreciate your contribution to this project. It was very difficult for me to prepare a design with no mechanical collisions in the entire workspace. Assembling all the parts also was a big challenge. Finally, we can see how the robot moves in real. Thanks again, great job =)

[@NicholasSeward]

Yesssss! That is a thing of beauty. Great work everyone! This isn't the first but it is the best implementation yet.

[@Treksh]

Now that's an impressive mechanism.

[@Leafyfpv]

So cool to see the rendering then this actual machine... Props!

[@efrainrodriguez5414]

This is amazing. Great work!!

[@WaynesStrangeBrain]

WOW! how are there not more comments on this? (oh, it came out 4 seconds ago, that's good). This is a thing of beauty. What are you going to carry with it?

[@CoRoETS]

Thanks. The robot design and this specific prototype have no practical value (the robot has low stiffness and small workspace and is very expensive to manufacture) but it has an amazing educational value. Since both its inverse and direct kinematic models are trivial, undergraduate students can easily work with the robot and develop various elements to its controller. For example, the students who programmed this motion developed a basic G-code interpreter, had to learn about absolute and relative displacements, base and tool reference frames, etc.

[@onemorething9911]

Wow I would love to read the creator's thesis
Please provide a link if possible

[@gentiligiuliano7882]

This is an amazing realieation. Are you going to make a commercial product?

[@jadmei4378]

Hello, that is fascinating design, I appreciate the effort has been done there, I have a question thou, what is the weight to actuator’s size ratio, like how much the arms size should be and the motor torque to hold ex: 2kg of weight. Thanks

[@williamhuang5329]

Hanzhen harmonic gear , over 30 years experience , robot arm gear

[@OfficialyMax]

Jealous :P