Design of a large-scale cable-driven robot with translational motion

The design of a new cable-driven robot for large-scale manipulation is presented with focus on the tension condition in the cables. In this robot, the arrangement of the cables is such that the moving platform has three translational motions. The robot has potentials for large-scale robotic manipulations, machining of large parts and material handling. The design analysis presented here is towards the synthesis of the robot as well as the sizing of the actuators and cables. The synthesis of this robot is dependent on the results of the tensionable workspace analysis previously published by the Alikhani et al. [6]. The analysis of the cable forces is presented in detail, which is then used to size the actuators. For this purpose, a geometrical approach is used to represent the capability of the end-effector for applying forces and moments as convex polyhedra. The design problem is then reduced to the sizing of these polyhedra according to the design requirements and manufacturing limitations. A prototype is also designed and fabricated, which is presented at the end to further elaborate on the proposed approach.