Analysis and Optimization of a New Differentially Driven Cable Parallel Robot

In this paper, a new three degrees of freedom (DOF) differentially actuated cable parallel robot is proposed. This mechanism is driven by a prismatic actuator and three cable differentials. Through this design, the idea of using differentials in the structure of a spatial cable robot is investigated. Considering their particular properties, the kinematic analysis of the robot is presented. Then, two indices are defined to evaluate the workspaces of the robot. Using these indices, the robot is subsequently optimized. Finally, the performance of the optimized differentially driven robot is compared with fully actuated mechanisms. The results show that through a proper design methodology, the robot can have a larger workspace and better performance using differentials than the fully driven cable robots using the same number of actuators.