Cable-Driven Parallel Robot Actuators: State of the Art and Novel Servo-Winch Concept

Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) use cables arranged in a parallel fashion to manipulate an end-effector (EE). They are functionally similar to several cranes that automatically collaborate in handling a shared payload. Thus, CDPRs share several types of equipment with cranes, such as winches, hoists, and pulleys. On the other hand, since CDPRs rely on model-based automatic controllers for their operations, standard crane equipment may severely limit their performance. In particular, to achieve reasonably accurate feedback control of the EE pose during the process, the length of the cable inside the workspace of the robot should be known. Cable length is usually inferred by measuring winch angular displacement, but this operation is simple and accurate only if the winch transmission ratio is constant. This problem called for the design of novel actuation schemes for CDPRs; in this paper, we analyze the existing architectures of so-called servo-winches (i.e., servo-actuators which employ a rotational motor and have a constant transmission ratio), and we propose a novel servo-winch concept and compare the state-of-the-art architectures with our design in terms of pros and cons, design requirements, and applications.