  The paper proposes a new calibration method for parallel manipulators that
allows efficient identification of the joint offsets using observations of the
manipulator leg parallelism with respect to the base surface. The method
employs a simple and low-cost measuring system, which evaluates deviation of
the leg location during motions that are assumed to preserve the leg
parallelism for the nominal values of the manipulator parameters. Using the
measured deviations, the developed algorithm estimates the joint offsets that
are treated as the most essential parameters to be identified. The validity of
the proposed calibration method and efficiency of the developed numerical
algorithms are confirmed by experimental results. The sensitivity of the
measurement methods and the calibration accuracy are also studied.
