Design of a Tendon Driven Parallel Manipulator for Micro-factory Applications

In this paper, the design and application of a tendon driven (TD) parallel kinematic manipulator (PKM) is discussed with regards to micro-factory. Two different configurations of a 6-dof TD-PKM are presented, respectively with six and eight cables, and their kineto-static analysis is performed, to evaluate workspace and isotropic behaviour. The design of the special pulleys is described and the main issues on the developed control strategy to deal with a fast manipulator reconfiguration are discussed.