Kinetostatic analysis of hybrid cable-based manipulators with linkage

This study presents formulations of the velocity and force equations for a class of hybrid cable-driven manipulators constrained with serial linkage. Combining lightweight cables with linkages makes these manipulators lighter and more compact compared to all-cable-driven and all-rigid-link manipulators. Redundant actuation is required to keep the cables taut. The paper discusses two configurations: a) redundant actuators mounted on the passive joints of the serial linkage; and b) manipulators with redundant cables. To preserve generality, the analysis was based on three jacobian matrices that correspond to the serial linkage´s active and passive joints as well as the driving cables. The paper presents two examples of configurations (a) and (b) where cable layouts were optimized utilizing techniques reported in earlier work of the authors. The examples include a 5-DOF and a spherical hybrid cable-driven manipulators with their workspace analysis.