Motion Control of Cable-Driven Rehabilitation Devices with Large Deformation Cables

Robotic rehabilitation devices based on cable-driven parallel manipulator (CDPM) have been proposed and developed by many researchers in the past decade. As rehabilitation devices are usually in direct contact with trainees, safety is paramount for rehabilitation devices. In this paper, an approach is proposed to provide inherent safety for CDPM-based rehabilitation devices using large deformation cables. A motion control strategy for CDPMs with large deformation cables and position-controlling actuators is presented. The motion control strategy is developed based on a third-order system model. It does not require the dynamics model of the cables. The effectiveness of the proposed motion control strategy is verified with motion control simulation of a planar CDPM with large deformation cables. It is shown that the proposed motion control strategy can effectively control the motion of the example CDPM with large deformation cables having various stiffness. What's more, it can also effectively attenuate the vibration of a CDPM.