DESIGN AND PROGRAMMING A 3D SIMULATOR AND CONTROLLING GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE OF ICASBOT, A CABLE SUSPENDED ROBOT

Abstract

This paper presents a graphical user interface (GUI) and simulator which is designed for a cable suspended robot (ICaSbot), in LabVIEW environment. This interface is designed to be used for training the users in a virtual environment and also controlling the cable robot in an on-line way. The proposed GUI consists of kinematics, dynamics and on-line control sections. All of the mentioned sections are involved in the simulator of the robot employed to display the motion of the end-effector in a virtual environment. Using the proposed GUI, the user is able to exert the desired commands and study the end–effector motion and all of its kinematics and kinetics output in a virtual environment. Afterward this motion can be applied to the real robot in the part called “hardware control” while six different control methodology can be selected. The controlling commands such as driving the motors and monitoring the actual data which are received from the sensors can be managed in this part of GUI. The efficiency and applicability of the designed GUI is proved by conducting some ISO and experimental tests on the cable robot of IUST called ICaSbot and comparing the results with simulation including of repeatability and accuracy tests and tracking a predefined trajectory.