Spherical deployable linkage assembly
This assembly of spherical rhombus linkages expands to enclose a volume. It was designed by Jerome Choe to explore the construction of complex articulated systems. (UCI Robotics and Automation Lab)
Animations of linkage movement.
Brock Engineering’s mechanism home page
Fred Klingener has generated a number of interesting mechanism animations. My favorite is the Peaucellier straight line mechanism. You will find a table of 16 or so animations at his site:
http://www.brockeng.com/mechanism/index.htm
Brock Institute Logo
Linkage animations on synthetica
This link connects to a web-page with a number of linkage animations. There are several planar four-bar linkages, several spherical four-bar linkages, and an example of a spatial four-bar linkage called a Bennett linkage that is shown below. This page also includes a number of spherical linkage animations generated by students some years ago. (UCI Robotics and Automation Lab)
http://synthetica.eng.uci.edu/Linkages.html
This animation was generated by HaiJun Su using POV-Ray. It is a Bennett linkage designed to guide the coupler linkage through three specified task positions:
Spherical eight-bar linkage for a car door
This spherical eight-bar linkage was designed by GimSong Soh to guide a car door from the side to the top of the vehicle. This animation shows the versatility of movement provided by these linkages. (UCI Robotics and Automation Lab)