Investigation of Wire Failure Effect on Stiffness Maps of Planar Wire-Actuated Parallel Manipulators

In the work presented, the complete form of stiffness of planar wire-actuated parallel manipulators is formulated. The differential form of the static force and moment equations is used to formulate the symmetric stiffness matrix of the manipulator. Stiffness maps over the workspace of manipulators about and along different directions are developed and the effect of wire failure on the stiffness maps is investigated. Some strategies for retrieving the lost stiffness after the wire failure are discussed. The effects of the presented strategies on stiffness maps over the workspace of example planar wire-actuated manipulators are presented.