7-DOF Cable-Driven Humanoid Robotic Arm Available to Purchase

The purpose of this paper is to study a 7-DOF humanoid cable-driven robotic arm, implement kinematics and dynamics analysis, present different cable-driven designs and evaluate their merits and drawbacks. Since this is a redundant mechanism, kinematics optimization is used to avoid joint limits, singularities and obstacles. Cable kinematics analysis studies the relationships between cable length and the end-effector pose. This is a design modified from the literature. Several new designs are compared in pseudostatics analysis of the arm and a favorable design is suggested in terms of motion range and the cable tensions. Linear programming is used to optimize cable tensions. Dynamics analysis shows that the energy consumption of a cable-driven arm is much less than that of traditional motor-driven arm. Cable-driven robots have potential benefits but also some limitations.