A Dual Stage Planar Cable Robot: Dynamic Modeling and Design of a Robust Controller With Positive Inputs

Abstract

Cable robots have been extensively used for loading and unloading of cargo in shipping industries. A novel six-degree of freedom two-stage cable robot has been proposed by NIST for skin-to-skin transfer of cargo. In this paper, we look at a planar version of this two-stage cable robot. The disturbance motion from the sea is considered while modeling the dynamics of robot. The problem of robust control of the end-effector in the presence of unknown disturbances, along with maintaining positive tensions in the cables, is tackled by using the idea of redundancy. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the control strategy.