CASPR: A Comprehensive Cable-Robot Analysis and Simulation Platform for the Research of Cable-Driven Parallel Robots

The study of cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) has attracted much attention in recent years. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, no single software platform exists for researchers to perform different types of analyses for CDPRs of arbitrary structure. In this paper, the Cable-robot Analysis and Simulation Platform for Research (CASPR) of CDPRs is introduced. Using this platform, arbitrary types and structures of CDPRs, such as single and multi-link CDPRs, can be studied for a wide range of analyses, including kinematics, dynamics, control and workspace analysis. CASPR achieves this using a general CDPR model representation and an abstracted software architecture. Moveover, CDPRs can be defined using Extensible Markup Language (XML) with out of-the-box availability of an extensive range of robots and analysis tools. The open-source platform aims to provide both a communal environment for the researchers to use and add models and algorithms to. The example case studies demonstrate the potential to perform analysis on CDPRs, directly compare algorithms and conveniently add new models and analyses.