Active vibration canceling of a cable-driven parallel robot using reaction wheels

Cable-driven parallel robots allow for fast motions and huge workspaces, using relatively lightweight moving masses and low-power actuation. This kind of structure yields usually very cost-effective solutions. However, the wider the workspace, the lower the equivalent stiffness of the end-effector yielding inaccuracies due mainly to unwanted vibrations. In this paper, we propose a new approach to compensate for these vibrations. Reaction wheels are used to cancel rotational oscillations of the platform. A planar cable-driven robot built with cheap and lightweight Lego Mindstorms parts is used to validate the concept.