Positioning of a cable-driven parallel robot at better than 250 μm using multilateration and photogrammetric measurement systems

Improving the positioning accuracy of cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) is crucial for industrial applications. These robots, operating in large volumes and handling heavy loads, have an accuracy limited by several factors, such as variations in ambient temperature or changes of the load being transported, which affect the mechanical structure of the robot or the tensions in the cables. For instance, CoGiRo is a CDPR of dimensions of 11 m × 15 m × 6 m able to move a platform weighing up to 500 kg. Its resolution is a few tens of micrometres, but its positioning, estimated from the winch encoders, lacks accuracy. To accurately place the CoGiRo mobile platform in the desired position and orientation, this paper proposes to use multilateration and photogrammetric measurement systems in a collaborative way. Photogrammetry continuously measured the poses of the mobile platform with worst-case coordinate uncertainties in the depth direction moving away from the cameras, with 0.2 mm being typical for all lines of sight, dropping to 0.5 mm where lines of sight were blocked by occlusion. The photogrammetric system reported poses at 2 Hz to the multilateration system, enabling it to align its stations on the distant targets and measure static poses of the platform with an estimated uncertainty typically less than 70 μm for the position coordinates and less than 110 μrad for the orientation angles. Multilateration measurements were then used by CoGiRo to reduce its positioning errors to less than 250 μm. The technique was validated using a practical assembly of two square-shaped metallic parts equipped with 10 independent capacitive distance sensors that allowed us to demonstrate part alignment to better than 250 μm.