Publication
Planning wrench-feasible motions for cable-driven hexapods
Journal Article (2016)
Journal
IEEE Transactions on Robotics
Pages
442-451
Volume
32
Number
2
Doc link
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2016.2529640
File
Abstract
Motion paths of cable-driven hexapods must carefully be planned to ensure that the lengths and tensions of all cables remain within acceptable limits, for a given wrench applied to the platform. The cables cannot go slack --to keep the control of the robot-- nor excessively tight --to prevent cable breakage-- even in the presence of bounded perturbations of the wrench. This paper proposes a path planning method that accommodates such constraints simultaneously. Given two configurations of the robot, the method attempts to connect them through a path that, at any point, allows the cables to counteract any wrench lying in a predefined uncertainty region. The configuration space, or C-space for short, is placed in correspondence with a smooth manifold, which facilitates the definition of a continuation strategy to search this space systematically from one configuration, until the second configuration is found, or path non-existence is proved by exhaustion of the search. The force Jacobian is full rank everywhere on the C-space, which implies that the computed paths will naturally avoid crossing the forward singularity locus of the robot. The adjustment of tension limits, moreover, allows to maintain a meaningful clearance relative to such locus. The approach is applicable to compute paths subject to geometric constraints on the platform pose, or to synthesize free-flying motions in the full six-dimensional C-space. Experiments are included that illustrate the performance of the method in a real prototype.
Categories
robot kinematics, robot programming, robots.
Scientific reference
O. Bohigas, M. Manubens and L. Ros. Planning wrench-feasible motions for cable-driven hexapods. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 32(2): 442-451, 2016.
Follow us!