This paper shows that redundant actuation can reduce the energy consumption of parallel mechanisms, in some cases by a considerable margin. A theoretical analysis for the energy-saving mechanism is elucidated, and an energy consumption model for a servo-motor system is proposed. Our hypothesis is experimentally verified with a widely used two-degree of freedom parallel mechanism design driven by three actuators. Experimental results show that redundant actuation can reduce the electrical energy consumption of the actuators by up to 45% compared to the corresponding
nonredundantly actuated version of the mechanism.

Funding Information
* The research program of Kookmin University in Korea, the IGPT Project (N0000005) of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy in Korea
* The Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea funded by the Ministry of Education (2013055323)