Abstract
A novel cable reel named "Unicorn Reel" had been developed for mobile robots working in hostile environments. The Unicorn reel uses the Oscillating Level Winder Arm to lead the cable from the pipe to the winding system, which needs a constant cable tension to perform constant neatly winding. In this paper, we propose a control method to keep the cable tension constant for the Unicorn reel, which uses a leaf spring and a micro-displacement sensor. After the calibration of the leaf spring is performed, we also measure the cable tension by a force sensor and demonstrate the validity of the control method.
