Modeling and Optimal Control of a Sport Utility Cable Suspended Robot

A new mechanism is presented in this paper for simulating the athlete performance and training the sportsman’s exercises. This mechanism is an autonomous closed loop six degrees of freedom (DOFs) cable suspended robot which eases the implementation of some sport utilities. It cancels the necessity of presence of a sport coach for training the sportsman. Using the proposed robot, it is possible to program the robot for training the athlete limb (arm, leg and etc.) within a predefined trajectory corresponding to his special sport performance. Considering the fact that in many sports a large environmental space needs to be covered by the athlete movement, ordinary robots are not capable to be employed for this application while cable robots are applicable since a large dynamic workspace can be covered by them. Moreover, training the sportsman limb requires a precise movement of the mentioned end-effector on a predefined trajectory. This importance could not be satisfied without using a proper closed loop controlling system since variable external disturbances affects on the end-effector as a result of the weight of the sportsman limb and its dynamic movement. The validity and efficiency of the proposed mechanism in training the athletes’ limb is verified by conducting experimental test on Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST) cable robot (ICaSbot).