Cable suspended robots: design, planning and control

Abstract

Cable-suspended robots are structurally similar to parallel actuated robots, but with the fundamental difference that cables can only pull the end-effector but not push it. This feature makes the design, planning and control of cable-suspended robots a lot more challenging compared to their counterparts - parallel-actuated robots. This paper describes the kinematic and dynamic models, work-space, trajectory planning, and feedback controllers for these robots. These results are demonstrated through simulation and experiments on a six degree-of-freedom cable suspended robot.