Kinematics and Stiffness of Active-Passive Hybrid Cable-Driven Robots: Modeling and Analysis

Active-Passive Hybrid Cable-Driven Robots (APHCDRs) are a novel type of cable-driven robots with the design of active-passive-linkage segments. Compared with tradition ones, they are more flexible and have higher maneuverability in confined environment, thus, are widely researched in recent years. However, the workspace and stiffness performance of APHCDRs which are two important properties were rarely studied. In this paper, the generalized kinematic model of APHCDRs is established first. Then, the resolved workspace and stiffness model are proposed. Workspace radius and stiffness are analyzed by considering link length and linkage ratio respectively. Finally, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used to search for the optimal configurations of APHCDRs which reach maximum workspace area, working radius and maximum stiffness respectively. The analysis results on the workspace and stiffness are useful for optimizing of APHCDRs’ structural design.