Image Recognition and Positioning Control for Cable-Suspended Parallel Robots

The main goals of this paper are focused on the implement visual feedback controller for cable-suspended robot (CSR), especially for pick-and-place operation. This study will propose a novel algorithm which is combined CSR coordinate transformation with image recognition to manipulate the suspended gripper to the desire position for assigned material handling tasks. Two webcams are introduced to sense the orientation of the end-effector, one is calculated the horizontal planar coordinate of the target, and the other is measured the vertical height for the target. Accordingly, the two-dimensional spatial image can be converted into 3-D image coordinates by using such approach. Based on the sensing information, the robots can convert the target position to the required cable lengths and then driving the servomotor to retract (or release) the cable lengths to manipulate the suspended gripper to the desired position. Several experiments will be carried out to verify the proposed methodology. The widespread variety of themes that are deliberated in this study can be applied to cranes, aerostats, and others large-scale manufacturing usages that need cable-driven robots.