Kinetostatic Analysis of a Novel Planar Cable-Driven Robot with a Single Cable Loop

One of the main problems of Cable-Driven Robots is the limited workspace in comparison to the frame area (in planar cases) or frame volume (in spatial cases). Depending on the presence of external force and the minimum and maximum allowed tension values, the workspace can be significantly decreased. Previous works focused on solving kinematic or dynamic problems when cables are sagging and, as a consequence, to include these end-effector poses into the usable workspace of the robot. In this paper, we tackle the problem of increasing the workspace of cable-driven robots by means of two mechanical modifications: adding passive carriages to the frame and using a single cable loop to command the end-effector pose. The workspace gain for a planar case is presented taking into account the different robot parameters.