(A) new 3 d.o.f cable-suspended haptic interface

Abstract

Cable-suspended haptic interface has advantageous features such as low inertia, high stiffness, high payload-to-weight ratio, low weight (low energy consumption), large workspace over conventional rigid-link haptic interface. Despite these many advantages, inherent major problems of cable-suspended mechanism such as redundancy of actuators, incompact & insufficient force feasible workspace, inability of manipulation with high speed and thereby low accuracy of position result in limiting the extent of application. In this study, a novel and unique mechanism different from traditional approaches for a cable-suspended manipulator is proposed to solve those limiting factors. And a new 3 d.o.f cable-suspended haptic interface is designed and constructed considering simulation results for mechanical architecture, tension (velocity) of a spiral spring for high-speed manipulation, and workspace analysis. Experiments are conducted into two aspects of performance, which are the position input and force output (impedance haptic display). Experimental results show the usefulness of the proposed new mechanism as a haptic interface. Eventually, four inherent problems of conventional cable-suspended haptic interface are resolved reasonably from the developed three degrees of freedom cable-suspended haptic device and its control method.