Experimental Validation of a Three-Degree-of-Freedom Cable-Suspended Parallel Robot for Spatial Translation With Constant Orientation

Abstract

This paper shows an experimental validation for the design of a three-degree-of-freedom (DOF) cable-suspended parallel robot, which has six cables attached to the end-effector, arranged in three pairs, with each pair being driven by a single motor. For each pair, the moving platform attachment points and the winch cable guides on the fixed frame form a parallelogram, an arrangement that allows the end-effector to be positioned throughout its static workspace (SW) while maintaining a constant orientation. In this paper, the kinematic modeling of the robot is first described, along with its SW. Then, the robot's kinematic sensitivity is assessed in position and orientation such that an upper bound is found for the amplification of the cable positioning errors in Cartesian space. Finally, experimental results obtained using a proof-of-concept mechanism are described, which confirm the claim that the proposed design maintains a constant platform orientation in the SW.