Cable robots can only pull not push, as the actuation of each cable is unidirectional. Tradition control methods for cable robots often cannot be used. There are many control techniques applied in systems with input torque saturation limits. However, none of these control methods have been used for cable robots. In this study, the researcher applied two nonlinear control methods for cable robot systems and evaluated their simulation performance.
The tracking control (Moreno-Valenzuela, 2006) and the nonlinear anti-windup control (Morabito et al., 2004) are the two nonlinear control methods which are applied to a cable robot model in this study. Both methods were developed for actuator-saturation control for bi-directional serial robot joints. Here they are applied to unidirectional cable robot control. The two control methods were applied on the model of a cable robot. MATLAB is used to implement the controller and to simulate the system performance. The conclusion involves comparing and evaluating the performance of the proposed nonlinear control methods for cable robot systems.