Study on Energy Consumption and Cable Force Optimization of Cable-Driven Parallel Mechanism in Automated Storage/Retrieval System

This paper focuses on energy consumption and cable force optimization of cable-driven parallel mechanism which is adopted as the automated storage/retrieval platform for automated warehouse systems. The movement of the moving platform for the Cable-driven parallel mechanism is controlled by changing the lengths of cables instead of rigid limb. Compared to the traditional stacker for storage/retrieval operation in automated warehouse systems, Cable-driven parallel mechanism has significant advantages, such as high speed, high space utilization and low energy consumption because its driving modules possess the features of simple mechanical structure, small mass and rapid linear movement. This paper presents an optimization method of minimal cable force distribution which has clear physical meaning and can improve the computational efficiency. Then, the energy consumptions of the warehouse system with different cable force distributions under the same motion are studied. The energy consumptions are discussed and the result shows that the optimization method of minimal cable force distribution is useful to reduce the overall energy consumption of the warehouse system.