On the inverse kinematics and statics of cable-suspended robots

Abstract

This paper examines some issues concerning the inverse kinematics and statics of cable-suspended robots and studies some of the inherent workspace limitations that result from the fact that the robot is cable actuated. The paper presents a necessary and sufficient condition for a cable-suspended robot to be capable of achieving static equilibrium at a given configuration. This condition is based on the left null space of an augmented manipulator Jacobian and is easily implemented as an algorithm for testing configurations. To illustrate the efficacy of the results, planar and fully spatial examples are presented.