The European ROCABLE project, initiated in 2020 with the IRT Jules Verne, INRIA, EES-Clemessy ADS and piloted by the CNRS with the LS2N, ended a few days ago. The project partners, all experts in the field of robotics, presented the results obtained during these 9 months of development.

 

Towards collaborative use of Cable-Driven Parallel Robots

Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) is a class of parallel robots whose moving platform is linked to a fixed base frame with cables. The non-rigid, low mass and elastic nature of cables provide CDPRs with unique safety challenges. Indeed, the lack of standards and safety studies on CDPRs is one important obstacle to their adoption in industry.

 

The ROCABLE project aims to address the specific safety issues of CDPRs and to develop collaborative industrial applications. The main challenge is to enable coexistence between CDPRs and operators, while guaranteeing the safety of the latter.

 

At first, ROCABLE identified the main standards and directives to be followed for the integration of CDPRs in industry, as well as their shortcomings, due to the specificities of CDPRs. This work was carried out in collaboration with all the project partners, LS2N, INRIA and Clemessy, and with the support of CETIM.

 

Promising results

In the second phase of the project, the IRT Jules Verne implemented standard safety functions on a new prototype of CDPR, equipped with safety technology: several experimental sessions allowed to test and compare these functions and the behaviour of the robot in different configurations.

 

Moreover, in collaboration with the LS2N and with the support of the CEA, impact tests were carried out in order to challenge the ISO/TS 15066 technical specification, used for calculating the impact force of robots, with specificities of the CDRPs.

 

The work carried out by the project partners also focused on the behaviour of the robot in the event of cable braking as well as on new strategies for detecting collisions between the cables and the environment, using proprioceptive sensors.

 

The results of the ROCABLE project represent an important contribution for the safety of CDRPs and an important step towards their industrial deployment.

 

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under COVR – Award Agreement – Realistic Trial ID no. S38661| Call 3.

 

Project factsheet : here