Mechanism and Control of Parallel-Wire Driven System

Abstract

Many of the conventional robot manipulators have a serial-link mechanism to imitate a human arm. In recent years, however, industries have been aggressive in putting parallel-link mechanisms into practical use to cope with various problems that no conventional serial-link mechanisms have ever been able to solve. Under the circumstances, this paper describes a parallel-wire driven system, one of the parallel mechanisms. It is a system to drive a controlled object with flexible and light wires instead of rigid links. It has many advantages over conventional serial-link mechanisms or other ordinary parallel-link mechanisms. This paper first overviews previous studies on parallel-wire driven robots, and then details the mechanism and control of these systems, as well as examples of their application.