Kinematic Modeling and Twist Feasibility of Mobile Cable-Driven Parallel Robots

The kinematic performance of any robotic system can be analyzed from its first order kinematic model. Recently a novel concept of Mobile Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (MCDPRs) has been introduced to achieve an autonomous reconfiguration of Reconfigurable Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (RCDPRs). To analyze the kinematic performance of MCDPRs, this paper presents the first order kinematic model of the latter. Using the proposed kinematic model, the Available Twist Set (ATS) is determined that is required to analyze the twist capacities of MCDPRs. In contrast to ATS of classical CDPRs we show that the ATS of MCDPRs depends, not only on the cables velocities, but on the velocities of Mobile Bases (MBs) as well. As illustrative examples, the twist capacities of two and six Degree of Freedom (DoF) MCDPR is presented.