Integrated simulation and control environment for the development and safe start-up of cable driven parallel robots

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents a new environment designed to facilitate the conceptualization and automation of CDPRs (Cable Driven Parallel Robots). Utilizing a platform for robotic simulation, an industrial controller, and a data gateway to communicate both systems, it is possible to emulate CDPR motion in early design, development, and start-up phases. Thus, this simulation environment allows to test how the robot will behave in advance in order to obtain a safer and more reliable first operation with the real robot. An spatially under-constrained CDPR with four cables was used to validate the capabilities of the proposed integrated environment, comparing its performance against an industry-standard hardware prototype. Both the simulation model and the real prototype performed the same trajectory in order to assess a time delay and position errors between them. Evaluation results revealed that the simulation accurately replicated the performance of its industrial counterpart, with a peak divergence of 0.27% in the position of the robot under various speed scenarios. This occurs even when accounting for latency arising from data exchange connecting the industrial control unit to the simulation. The results have shown that the environment is suitable for trajectory control of new CDPR architectures under different dynamic conditions.