Cable-driven parallel robots (CDPR)
Cable-driven parallel robots are a special class of robotic manipulators that consist of a rigid end-effector actuated and constrained by a number of cables. CDPRs offer a number of significant advantages over traditional rigid mechanisms: cables are extremely light, low cost, and easily reconfigured.
As a result, CDPRs are able to command very-high accelerations with relatively small actuators and span large workspaces that would be impossible using rigid structures. Aside from the various benefits, CDPRs also contain a number of unique technical challenges stemming from the uni-directional force capacity of the constraining cables.
These challenges include platform vibrations resulting from low manipulator stiffness and the potential for collisions between cables and obstacles in the environment.
New applications of cable-driven robots
Firefighting is among the applications which still has not robotic solution. Aerial cable towed robots with land-fixed winches is a novel class of CDPRs which is benefiting from the agility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as well as the power of land-winches to hold and move an aerial platform. Such novel class of CDPRs can be used for autonomous firefighting applications in different environments as shown below.
