An All-in-one Cable-driven Parallel Robot with Flexible Workspace and Its Auto-calibration Method

For traditional cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs), changing the workspace is relatively difficult, which needs to reconfigure the anchor points and the external frame. The main reason is that the winch is separated from the moving platform, and a series of pulleys are applied to guide the driving cables. This paper proposes a novel all-in-one suspended CDPR that integrates all components in the moving platform to realize a flexible workspace. For the rapid construction of the CDPR, the ends of the cables only need to be connected to the existing anchor point. However, due to the flexible workspace, the position values of the anchor points should be recalibrated by appropriate calibration methods, especially by using a rapid auto-calibration method in application sites. Thus, based on the kinetostatic model considering sagging cable, an auto-calibration method with an inclinometer is proposed. Simulation and experiment are conducted respectively, and the experiment results indicate that 78.56% totally reduces the errors of the fixed anchor points. Moreover, experiments were carried out to validate the design and kinematics.