Design of a Novel Cable-Driven Parallel Robot for 3D Printing Building Construction (2022-11)¶

A novel cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR), featured with a simple structure and energy-efficient driving mechanism, for 3D printing building construction is proposed, and details of the design methodology are presented. To overcome the limitation of the previous approaches, the CDPR is designed to operate with only five cables; hence, its structure is simplified. To avoid the interference with the building being printed, lower cables are placed on a plane parallel to the ground and they are controlled to move synchronously up and down according to the height of the building being printed. Tension distribution of the cables required for the operation is analyzed using the constrained optimization problem. Workspace determination is presented in consideration of the cable strength as well using the tension distribution analysis. A gravity compensation mechanism is proposed and applied to reduce the energy consumption. The validity of the proposed CDPR and design methodology is verified through the simulation.