An approximately analytical solution method for the cable-driven parallel robot in FAST

Abstract

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) is the largest single-dish aperture telescope with a cable-driven parallel robot introduced to achieve the highest sensitivity in the world. However, to realize the high-precision, mechanical equations of such a robot are always complicated, so that it is difficult to achieve real-time control by the traditional iterative method. In this regard, this paper proposes an approximately analytical solution method, which uses the approximately linear relationship between the main parameters of FAST to bypass some iterations. With the coefficients of the relationship extracted, static or quasi-static mechanical equations can be analytically solved. In this paper’s example, this method saves at least 90% of the calculating time and the calculated values are consistent with the experimental data. With such huge efficiency improvements, real-time and high-precision control of the FAST will no longer be difficult work. Besides, all the work in this paper is expected to be used in the FAST.