Abstract
Workspace is an important reference for design of cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs). Most current researches focus on calculating the workspace of redundant CDPRs. However, few literatures study the workspace of under-constrained CDPRs. In this paper, the static equilibrium reachable workspace (SERW) of spatial 3-cable under-constrained CDPRs is solved numerically since expressions describing workspace boundaries cannot be obtained in closed form. The analysis steps to solve the SERW are as follows. First, expressions which describe the SERW and its boundaries are proposed. Next, these expressions are instantiated through the novel anchor points model composed of linear equations, quadratic equations and limits of tension in cables. Then, based on the reformulated linearization technique (RLT), the constraint system is transformed into a system containing only linear equality constraints and linear inequality constraints. Finally, the framework of branch-and-prune (BP) algorithm is adopted to solve this system. The effect of the algorithm is verified by 2 examples. One is a special 3-cable CDPR in which the anchor points layouts both on the moving platform (MP) and on the base are equilateral triangles, followed by the method to extract the SERW boundary where cables do not interfere with each other. The other is a general case with randomly selected geometry arrangement. The presented method in this paper is universal for spatial 3-cable CDPRs with arbitrary geometry parameters.
A branch and prune algorithm for the computation of generalized aspects of parallel robots
