Cable-driven parallel robot trajectory generation with optimized orientation considering disturbance rejection

Cable-driven parallel robots are desirable for large-scale manipulation tasks due to their low inertia, low cost, high speed, high flexibility, and high energy efficiency. Such tasks are typically performed outdoors, which requires the robot to have enhanced disturbance rejection capability. In this work, the disturbance rejection is achieved by exploiting the robot's redundancy in tasks where the end effector orientations are not strictly constrained (e.g., additive manufacturing). Exploiting this orientation redundancy, an anti-disturbance trajectory generator is proposed for cable-driven parallel robots based on a variation-based disturbance rejection function and an optimization with orientation as the variable. The performance of the proposed trajectory generation method is verified with a cable-driven parallel 3D printer to show enhanced stiffness and tracking performance under gust conditions in simulations and experiments.