A 4–4 cable-based parallel manipulator for an application in hospital environment

In this paper a 4-4 cable-based architecture is presented for an application in hospital environment. For robots in medical applications, safety and reliability are the most important requirements. Cable-based robots can accomplish those requirements because of their main characteristics in terms of good kinematics and dynamics properties and transportability. In this paper a 4-4 cable-based robot is presented to be used in hospital environment. Its task is to move injured or disabled people in a hospital room. The feasibility of the proposed lay-out is presented through an analysis and design of the system, and experimental simulations in laboratory tests. A low-cost easy-operation system for tension monitoring is proposed for experimental validation of the prototype operation.