Cable-Driven Parallel Robot with Reconfigurable End Effector Controlled with a Compliant Actuator.

Alejandro Rodriguez-Barroso,Roque Saltaren,Gerardo A Portilla,Juan S Cely,Marco Carpio

doi:10.3390/s18092765

Abstract

Redundancy in cable-driven parallel robots provides additional degrees of freedom that can be used to achieve different objectives. In this robot, this degree of freedom is used to act on a reconfigurable end effector with one degree of freedom. A compliant actuator actuated by one motor exerts force on both bodies of the platform. Due to the high tension that appears in this cable in comparison with the rest of the cables, an elastic model was developed for solving the kinestostatic and wrench analysis. A linear sensor was used in one branch of this cable mechanism to provide the needed intermediate values. The position of one link of the platform was fixed in order to focus this analysis on the relationship between the cables and the platform’s internal movement. Position values of the reconfigurable end effector were calculated and measured as well as the tension at different regions of the compliant actuator. The theoretical values were compared with dynamic simulations and real prototype results.

Highlights

Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) are parallel mechanisms whose end effector (EE) is manipulated by using flexible cables coiled in pulleys and winches attached to the rigid frame
The objective of this article was to define the kinetostatic analysis of a cable-driven parallel robot with a reconfigurable platform with one degree of freedom considered as the end effector
The analysis was made by fixing one body of this platform to the ground to focus on one compliant actuator. It parts from a winch situated on the upper side of the robot and is split into two different cables. One of these split cables is directly attached to one body of the reconfigurable platform while the other is attached to a spring

Summary

Introduction

Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) are parallel mechanisms whose end effector (EE) is manipulated by using flexible cables coiled in pulleys and winches attached to the rigid frame. Further examples are the Robocrane in its six-meter version [3], the Marionet-Crane with sides of 15 m [4], and the assembler of solar panels with a plant size of 15 × 8 m [5]. High speeds and accelerations have been achieved with the configurations provided by using a rigid spine [6,7,8] or without using it as in [9]. Prototypes such as those in [10,11,12,13]

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion