Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control of a Cable-Driven Hyper-Redundant Manipulator

A cable-driven hyper-redundant manipulator has superior dexterity for confined space applications. However, the modeling and control considering the cables are very complex. In this paper, we established the kinematics and dynamics models and proposed a dynamics control strategy. The multilevel mapping between the motors, cables, joints, and end-effector was first analyzed. The corresponding kinematics equations were derived and solved by combining analytical and numerical methods. Especially, the cable coupling relationship was established and a decoupling method was addressed to compensate the coupled motion between cables. Furthermore, we derived the dynamics equations including the cable forces and the joint variables. Considering practical control requirements, the cables' forces were distributed by simplifying the dynamics equations and obtaining the minimal solutions. Then, we presented a dynamics control strategy, which uses the forward and inverse kinematics of multilevel mapping for motion resolution and compensation, and computes the feedforward torques for the motors using recursive dynamics and “cable force-motor torque” relationship. Finally, a prototype and a truss inspection experiment system were developed to verify the corresponding models and methods. Experiment results show that the derived kinematic and the dynamic equations, and the proposed dynamic control strategy are effective.