Cable-Driven Robots

Our paper on Port Hamiltonian Modeling of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot is accepted to 6th IFAC Workshop on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Methods for Nonlinear Control - LHMNC 2018.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper in literature, which presents the Port Hamiltonian (PH) model of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot (CDPR) while considering a detailed and generic model of such a system. Here we consider the three dimensional dynamics of the cables using Finite Element Models (FEM) with masses distributed along the cable, based on the lumped mass model. Furthermore we tackle the challenging task of modeling the cable mass and elasticity changes, by considering a hybrid/switching model of the cables. By presenting a CDPR (especially for motion simulators e.g. the CableRobot Simulator of Max Planck Institute Tuebingen) in PH form, we also pave the way of enjoying the physics shaping controllers, e.g. IDA-PBC. In particular for motion simulators this is a very attractive feature, since a motion simulator is essentially a robotic system, which mimics the motion of a vehicle e.g. car, airplane or helicopter. Hence we believe a controller capable of shaping the physical properties of such a robotic system into a desired vehicle has a great potential to be acknowledged as a fundamental tool.

References

C. Schenk, B. Yüksel, C. Secchi and H.H. Bülthoff, Port Hamiltonian Modeling of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot, Accepted to 6th IFAC Workshop on Lagrangian and Hamiltonian Methods for Nonlinear Control-LHMNC 2018, Chile.