Catching motion of casting manipulation

We have been developing a casting manipulator which includes a flexible arm made out of soft material like a string in the link mechanism to enlarge the work space of the manipulator. In casting manipulation, a gripper is thrown to its target by releasing the string at a suitable time after generating enough motion of the gripper by swinging. In this paper we deal with the catching motion control of the gripper. We consider the necessity of the midair control of the gripper for catching a target. In order to enlarge the reachable area of the gripper, we propose the method of controlling the movement of the string by the brake mechanism. We confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed multiple braking control by simulation results and experimental results.