Design, Modeling, and Implementation of a 7-DOF Cable-Driven Haptic Device with a Configurable Cable Platform

This letter introduces a novel 7 Degree Of Freedom (DOF) cable-driven haptic device based on the concept of a configurable cable platform. In the proposed concept, a 1-DOF pinch grasping capability is provided via a network of ten passive cables kept in tension. The coordinated action on the cable platform of eight active cables driven from the base, fully controls the position, orientation, and grasping configuration of the device. This constitutes the first 7-DOF cable-driven robot that is made of a network of cables instead of a pure parallel architecture. Original static and kinematic models were developed to address the particularities of the proposed architecture. They are detailed in this manuscript and used to define the workspace and the control algorithm of the design. A working prototype illustrating an implementation of the theory is presented.