Hybrid Position/Force Control of a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot with Experimental Evaluation

For cable-driven parallel robots elastic cables are used to manipulate a mobile platform in the workspace. In this paper, we present a hybrid position-force control, which allows for applying defined forces on the environment and simultaneous movement along the surface. We propose a synchronous control of the cable forces to ensure the stability of the platform during movement. The performance of the controller is experimentally investigated regarding contact establishment and dynamic behavior during a motion on the cable robot IPAnema 3.