Workspace Analysis of a Hybrid-Driven Cable Parallel Mechanism

This paper presents a new-type hybrid-driven cable parallel mechanism, which combines hybrid-driven mechanism with cable parallel mechanism, and the mechanism can not only operate with high speed, high accuracy, and high payload, but also have high performance output movement. The workspace of hybrid-driven cable parallel mechanism is characterized as the space where the end-effector can reach with tensions in all cables, and it is studied in this paper. Firstly, through the kinematic analysis, it can be derived the location equations of the end-effector. Then, the paper analyzes the main factors influencing the workspace of hybrid-driven cable parallel mechanism such as cable tension, workspace of hybrid-driven mechanism, the length of cables, and the motion range. At the end, with the location equations and constraints, the workspace is determined. Computational example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed analysis method.