Wave Based Control of A Deployable Cable Driven Robot

Abstract

Cable driven parallel manipulator are known by their low costs and numerous applications. However despite of all research interests and developed methods they are not yet vastly used in action. The reason for this, is their limiting requirements for accurate assembly and installation process. The main goal of this paper is to propose a suitable control method by which the robot could appropriately be controlled, requiring no accurate calibrations or precise sensors. As it is well known, uncertainty in kinematics equations can lead to loose cables in redundant robots controlled through joint space controllers. In this paper a simple but very effective joint space controller is proposed that addresses the problem of loose cables by a wave based control method by employing a novel force feedback scheme. Indeed, a new conceptual framework for controlling deployable cable driven parallel manipulators is introduced by which such robots are greatly empowered at real-world scenarios. Finally, the performance of the proposed controller and its effectiveness is verified through some practical experiments showing that the proposed controller outperforms conventional cascade topologies in terms of much smoother tracking performance.