Forward kinematic analysis of a planar cable driven redundant parallel manipulator using force sensors

Newly developed cable driven redundant parallel manipulators (CDRPM) have numerous advantages compared to that of the conventional parallel mechanisms. However, there exist some challenging issues in over-constrained mechanisms like CDRPMs. In contrast to serial manipulators, complexity of parallel manipulator forward kinematics (FK) is one of the main issues being under study in the control of such manipulators. Moreover, using extra sensory data is a common approach in the FK solution of rigid-linked parallel manipulators, which is considered by fewer researchers for CDRPMs. In this paper, tension force sensors of the cables are used as an extra sensor to simplify analytical solution of the FK for a planar CDRPM. To find a suitable solution, geometrical and physical characteristics of the robot are analyzed. It is shown that the proposed method provides the required accuracy and significantly improves the process time compared to the conventional methods.