Cable wrapping phenomenon in cable-driven parallel manipulators

Abstract

In the study of cable-driven parallel manipulators (CDPMs), the interference between the cable and the rigid link(s) of the mechanisms have generally been excluded when the workspace is considered. This leads to the loss of perfectly feasible and useful areas in the workspace. In this paper, we model such a phenomenon by letting the cable wrap around the rigid link and including the results under workspace considerations. We construct a kinematic model of the cable path in a CDPM to include that segment of the cable wrapped over the surface of the rigid link, in addition to modeling the straight (unwrapped) segments of actuation cables in a conventional manner. The path that the cable wrappi..