AbstractA three degree‐of‐freedom (3‐DOF) spherical parallel manipulator consists of two tetrahedrons (pyramids). The base tetrahedron is fixed while the moving tetrahedron is rotating at the joint apex of the two tetrahedrons. This article studies the forward kinematics to a special 3‐DOF spherical parallel manipulator, where the three apical angles of the moving tetrahedron are equal to their counterparts in the base tetrahedron, respectively. The final result of the forward kinematics to this parallel manipulator is a univariate quartic polynomial equation, which has a direct algebraic solution. In addition, a special right‐angle case of the manipulator is investigated and its forward kinematics can be obtained directly. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.