Design and modeling of a novel mobile cable robot with dual-stage end effector

In this research, a new mobile cable robot with two moving platforms is designed and modeled which has a wide dynamic translational and rotational workspace for heavy and accurate product transportation. Today, it is desired to improve the cranes to achieve the highest stability and accuracy while heavier loads could be transported within the wider dexterous workspace. Considering the fact that the traditional cable robots are stationary, their related translational workspace is limited while the corresponding rotational range of the end effector is also bounded due to the positive tensile force limitation of the cables. Here, the cable robot is mounted on a mobile chassis to increase its translational workspace, while its end effector is promoted to a dual stage, to improve its rotational movement. The proposed robot has fifteen degrees of freedom (DOFs) including three degrees of freedom related to the mobile chassis of the robot and twelve degrees of freedom corresponding to the two engaged moving platforms. The kinematics and kinetics of the proposed robot are extracted using the Lagrange approach. The correctness of the modeling is approved with the aid of some simulation in MATLAB and comparing the results with SimScape. Also in order to show the efficiency of the mentioned improvement on the workspace of the robot, a comparative simulation study is performed between the traditional stationary cable robot and the proposed moving one. It is shown that using the proposed novel parallel robot, it is possible to carry any load between two points within a wide workspace and with high accuracy.