Workspace Analysis of a Planar Two Cables Robot

Abstract

Rehabilitation robots are usually made of rigid links which make them heavy. So their application is limited to the health clinics and does not have home use. Cable robots compensate these defects. They have an important defect that can only apply tension. This can substantially restrict the workspace of the robot. In this paper we introduce a configuration, which is combination of cables and springs for a two degrees of freedom (DOF) planar cable robot. Parameters of springs are obtained through an optimization process. Static and dynamic workspace for this robot then calculated for different configurations of springs calculated on design process. We choose the configuration that has the widest dynamic and static workspace and compare to a different two DOF with two actuators cable robot.