ISR / ROBOTIK 2010

Dynamic Modeling and Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation for the

Cable-Driven Parallel Robot IPAnema
Philipp Miermeister, Andreas Pott, Alexander Verl
Fraunhofer IPA; Nobelstrasse 12, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany

Abstract
In this paper, the mechatronic model of the cable-driven parallel robot IPAnema is presented. The dynamic equations
are established including the dynamic behavior of the mobile platform, the pulley kinematics of the winches, and a cable
model based on linear springs. The model of the actuation systems consists of the electro-dynamic behavior of the power
train as well as the dynamics of the servo controller. The presented model is feasible for real-time simulation, controller
design, as well as case studies for high-dynamic or large-scale robots. Simulation results and experimental measurements
with the parallel robot IPAnema are presented and compared.

Introduction

A cable-driven parallel robot consists of a rigid frame,

a mobile platform, and winches which control the cable
lengths. Coordinated motion of the winches allows moving the mobile platform on arbitrary spatial trajectories to
fulll tasks such as handling, assembly, and taking measurements. Compared to industrial robots, cable robots are
able to generate high velocities and accelerations due to
very small inertia. On the other hand, large workspace and
high payloads are possible due to the efcient force transmission through the cables. Simulation allows to study
such extreme scenarios quickly and in a cost-efcient way.
Therefore, a mechatronic model of cable robots is desirable
to plan and virtually prototype large-scale or high-dynamic
robots. Further applications are design and optimization of
force control as well as motion planning. In the last decade,
a lot of research has been carried out to study both theory
(see e.g. [1, 6, 7, 14]) and implementation [9, 11] of cable
robots. A dynamic model and a fuzzy control for a cable robot with six cables was presented as model for radio
telescopes [15]. A dynamic model using techniques from
multi-body system dynamics of the cable robot Segesta
was introduced [2, 4].The dynamics of under-constrained
cable robots was used for simulation and control [8, 10].
The work presented in this paper related especially to the
cable robot IPAnema, where details on the system architecture and application can be found in [12].

Figure 1: Experimental setup of the cable robot IPAnema

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Dynamic Model of Cable-Driven

Parallel Robots

The mechatronic system of the cable robot IPAnema is divided into a mechanical part including the platform with n
cables and winches on the one side and the electrical part
on the other side as illustrated in Figure 2. The electrical
part consists of n servo motors and position controllers.
The governing numerical control is not further modeled.
Its generated position signal i with i = 1, ..., n is used
as reference signal for the cascaded controller. The dynamic behavior of the individual subsystems is described
by ordinary differential equations (ODEs) of rst or second
order. For simulation and numerical integration the equivalent state space representation is obtained by transforming
the high order ODEs into rst order ODE-systems. The
overall system structure with its forward dynamics, inverse
kinematics, and the modeled subsystems with their associated input and output quantities is shown in Figure 2.
On the electrical side the servo motors are described by
their electrodynamics equations with the supply voltage
udq,i as input quantities and the measured motor currents
idq,i together with torque TSM,i as output quantities. The
measured motor currents are fed back to the inner current
control of the cascaded control. The current controller realizes a eld orientated control, which separately controls
the currents respective the d- and q-axis using id,ref,i , iq,ref,i
as reference input. id,ref,i is set to zero, while iq,ref,i is provided by the upstream velocity control with ref,i as referd
eff,i as actual motor velocity. The generated
ence and dt
motor torque TSM,i acts on the drum inside the winch together with the cable force fi and therefore both are considered as input quantities for the winch mechanics. The
drum angle Drum,i , the effective rotor angle eff,i , and the
rotary velocity eff,i are considered as output quantities
of the winch subsystem, whereas the rotor angle eff,i is
needed for the outer position and velocity control loop.
Describing the platform pose by generalized coordinates

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Numerical
control

Environment
fP , P

Position
control

ref,i

Velocity
control

iq,ref,i

Current
control

udq,i

TSM,i

Electro
dynamics

Winch
mechanics

Drum,i

Ampere
meter

Platform

fi

id,ref,i =0
d
dt

x, x,

f
Cables

Position
encoder

AT

Inverse
Kinematics

idq,i
eff,i
Robot electrics

Robot mechanics

Figure 2: Mechatronic model of a cable-driven parallel robot

x allows to determine the cable lengths q and the structure matrix AT [14] by inverse kinematics. The platform
motion is determined by the cable forces f as well as by
the applied force fP and torque P , which act on the tool
center point.

a = (0) rC + R0C

ez

R = E + 2pw pQ + 2pTQ pQ .

ex

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(3)

ez rP2
ey
4
2 ex
KM 3

(4)

l
rM

rBC

ez
ey
b
K P ex

rC
qG

r, R

ez
ey
K0

ex

Figure 3: Advanced kinematic loop including a winch pulley

Vector rC refers to the xed pivot point C, vector r1 describes the center point of the pulley respective KC , and
vector rP2 describes the cable contact point A respective
KM . R0C and RCM denote the transformation from KC
into K0 and from KM into KC , respectively. The mobile
platform is described as a free oating rigid body without
constraints, for which the stationary state follows from the
force equilibrium

(2)

To describe the platform kinematics, the local vector bi and

the cable vector li are introduced, whereas bi describes the
cable attachment points of the mobile platform and l is determined by the vector loop as shown in Figure 3 with the
closure-constraint
li (x) = ai r Rbi .

ey
r1

KC

the associated rotation matrix R is derived from the quaternions as shown in [13]

(C) r1 (x) + RCM (x)(M) rP2 (x)

qP

Modelling of Robot Mechanics

For parallel kinematics the computational effort for solving the forward kinematics is signicant and the solution
is not unique. Here, the proposed simulation model uses
inverse kinematics and forward dynamics, which are fast
and easy to solve and can be done in real-time. To avoid
forward kinematics the generalized coordinates of the platT

form pose are chosen as x = r T T , where r is
the position vector with respect to the inertial frame K0
T
T


and = pw pTQ
with pQ = px py pz
is
the platform rotation described by quaternions in order to
avoid singularities and to provide numerical stability. It
should be noted, that quaternions have to fulll the normalization constraint 2 1 = 0 if used to parameterize
rotations. By introduction of the skew-symmetric matrix

0
pz py
0
pz ,
pQ = pz
(1)
py px
0

u1
b1 u1


AT

un
bn un

f1


fP
..
= 0. (5)
. +
P
  
 fn
w
  

Using the Newton-Euler formulation for the platform dynamics yields a differential algebraic equation system

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(DAE) with six second-order differential equations, one algebraic equation, and seven unknowns

mP E
0

0
IP

Dlin
0

Tx

0
Drot


Drum

T x

0
+
= w + AT f
+
IP P
IP




qD
d

(6)

cA

gC

rP 1

2 1 = 0

(7)

qP

cB
s(Drum ) rP 2

Thereby mP and IP describe the platform mass and tensor

of inertia, while the damping matrices Dlin and Drot regard the friction of the environmental medium and cable
attachment points. Matrix E is the identity matrix and T
is dened as


E 0
T =
(8)
0 P

B(x) q

where matrix
P =2

pQ

pw E + pQ

Figure 4: Winch Kinematics

R34

(9)

describes the relation between quaternions and the rotary

[13]. Deriving Eq. (7) twice with revelocity = P
spect to time yields an ODE-system of the form

mP E
0
0
IP P x
=
0





Dlin
0
0


Drot P x +

w + AT f g C
0

(10)

Solving of the linear second-order equation M x

= k and
subsequent integration of x
involves drift effects caused by
differentiation of Eq. (7) which can be dealt with by pro P onto the conjecting the predicted solutions P and
straint manifold, respectively. Projection of P is equal to
the normalization of quaternions
=

P
P 2

(14)

is calculated by the cable length inside the gear

qG,i (Drum,i ) = cA + cB + si (Drum,i ), the cable length
inside the workspace qW,i (x) = li (x)2 + qP,i (x), and
the unwound cable length qD,i = ri Drum,i as shown in
Fig. 4. Cable lengths cA , cB are constant, while the length
si (Drum,i ) = Drum,i
2 h is variable due to the movable pulley
P1, which is synchronized with the drum using a gear. The
winches and the motors are connected by a planetary gears
which have the transmission ratio PG . From that, the relation between the rotor angle and the drum angle follows
with
i = PG Drum,i .

(15)

The difference between the nominal cable length and the

unwound cable length can be written as
qi (x, Drum,i ) = qW,i (x) qW0,i qD,i (Drum,i ). (16)
Deriving Eq. (16) with respect to time for i = 1, ..., n
yields
q = AT x qD .

(12)

The cables are modeled as parallel spring damper system

with a variable spring rate ci and damping rate di , due to
the changing effective cable length qeff,i . Cables absorb
only tractive forces yielding a piecewise function that reads

ci (qeff,i )qi + di (qeff,i )qi for fi > 0
fi =
0
for fi  0 .
(13)

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qeff,i = qG,i (Drum,i ) + qW,i (x0 ) + qD,i (Drum,i )

(11)

P is expressed by
while projection of

=
P P .

The effective cable length

(17)

The winch dynamics is primarily determined by the winch

mechanics moment of inertia JW,i and the frictional
torque TF,i (fi ), which itself depends on the cable force fi .
With the cable force on the one side and the motor torque
on the other side, the drum acceleration follows with

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eff,i = rDrum,i fi + TRot,i + TF,i (fi ) .

JW,i

(18)

Modeling of Robot Electrics

The robots electrical system includes the drives with embedded position controllers for the servo motors, the ampliers, and the servo motors. The ampliers use pulsewidth modulation to provide the motors with the necessary rotating three-phase voltage. For the simulation model
the ampliers are assumed as ideal devices and have not
been modeled while the permanent magnet synchronous
motors (PMSM) are modeled as simplied motors without
damping windings, iron loss, and with symmetrical starconnected motor windings.

leads to the desired motor current



0


.
idq,ref,i =
1
i + kT ,i
i
k,i

The reference value for the d-axis is set to zero, since a

motor current along the d-axis has no inuence on the motor torque. As with the velocity, the current is controlled
by a proportional integral controller with an amplication
of kdq,i , a time constant kTdq,i , and the control deviation
idq,i = idq,ref,i idq,eff,i

(25)

yielding the supply voltage

Controller

udq,i =

Figure 5: PMSM with inverter

To realize eld orientated control, the electrodynamics differential equations are transformed from the stators three
phase system into a two phase rotor x frame using Clarkeand-Park-transformation [5]. Introducing the winding resistance R12,i and the ux linkage dq,i , the voltage differential equation respective the dq-frame reads
dq,i = udq,i R12,i idq,i eff,i TI,i dq,i ,

(19)

where udq,i describes the input voltage controlled by the

upstream

cascaded control and the matrix TI,i is dened as

0 1
TI,i =
. Motor current
1 0


(20)
idq,i = L12,i 1 dq,i R,dq,i
is used for the inner current control loop. L12,i describes
the winding inductance and R,dq,i the rotor ux linkage
caused by the permanent magnets. Considering the pole
pair number ZP,i , the motor torque is obtained by
TRot,i =

(24)



3
ZP,i TI,i dq,i idq,i .
2

(21)

The position control calculates the reference value for the

downstream velocity control by the set point i and the effective angle eff,i using the controller amplication k,i
ref,i = k,i (i eff,i ) .

(22)

For the velocity control loop a proportional integral controller with an amplication of k,i
and a time constant

kT ,i
is used. Calculation of the control deviation
i = ref,i eff,i

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(23)



1
kd,i (id,i ) + kTd,i
id,i dt

.
1
kq,i (iq,i ) + kTq,i
iq,i dt

(26)

Implementation and HardwareIn-The-Loop Simulation

The cable-driven parallel robot IPAnema (Fig. 1) is currently under investigation at the laboratories of Fraunhofer
IPA. This robot provides a six degrees-of-freedom endeffector with seven or eight cables and focuses on industrial applications in the eld of material handling as
well as fast pick-and-place applications. The winches are
equipped with the permanent magnet synchronous motors IndraDyn S by Bosch Rexroth, which contain multiturn absolute encoders allowing to obtain the absolute cable length at any time with a resolution of 50 m. The
control system is based on the Windows PC-based realtime extension RTX and an adopted NC-controller by ISG
(Stuttgart, Germany) as shown in Fig. 6. The robot can be
programmed by G-Code (DIN 66025) similar to machine
tools using the Win32 user interface of ISG-NC. On the
industrial PC the interpolation cycle time of the trajectory
generator is 2 ms.
To get a universal and highly congurable model of the
cable robot which can be used for system investigation
and hardware-in-the-loop simulation, the model is implemented by use of Simulink and Matlab, whereas each subsystem is modeled individually and connected as indicated
in Fig. 2.
The simulation model basically consists of ordinary differential equations, which are implemented by equivalent
block diagrams. Simulink is used for model implementation, while Matlab is used for data management and analysis. The assembly of a single controller, motor, winch and
cable results in a chain of four submodels, which describes
the transfer behavior of a single power train i with the set
point i as input quantity and the cable force fi as output quantity. To get a universal model of the cable robot,
i.e. a model for an arbitrary number of cables and winches
all state variables and signals of the power train are extended by n dimensions. The parametrization of the robot

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Control PC
SERCOS Bus
Interface

Win32 Environment
RTX Environment
Process

Shared Memory

NC Kernel

NC- and
System Data
HLI

ISG-NC
User
Interface

Simulation
Data

Graphic
User
Interface

Process

Cable robot
Drives

Simulation
Scheduler

Simulation
Model Thread

System
Clock

Mutex

Simulink Realtime
Workshop

TCP/IP
Interface

Remote PC
3D
Visualization

Data
Files
Simulink Model

Figure 6: Integration of the simulation model with the cable robots numerical control hardware by use of Simulinks
Realt-Time Workshop and the real-time extension RTX
model is done by an XML-le which allows to save different robot congurations and load them on demand. At the
beginning of a simulation run, the XML-le of the desired
simulation model is loaded utilizing the javax.xml.xpath
and javax.xml.parsers class to load the data and assigning them to the related model variables inside the Matlab
workspace. Input data provided by the numerical control
are stored together with the simulation results inside the
Matlab workspace using time series objects which provide
methods for resampling, differentiation, ltering and other
operations enabling efcient data management.The RealTime Workshop of Simulink is used to generate source and
header les for real-time simulation. The les consist of C
or C++ code and provide public functions for accessing the
simulation model.
Running the simulation model inside the real-time environment demands a time deterministic xed step solver for
numerical integration, since variable step solver may violate the time slots given by the real-time environment. Here
a fourth order Runge-Kutta (ODE 4) integrator with a step
width of 9 105 s is used, which allows real-time simulation on the target device. Depending on the available
computational power, different integrators may be used.
After code generation the model is integrated with the RTX
extension and control hardware as shown in Fig. 6. RTX is
a self-contained real-time subsystem running on Windows
platforms while bypassing the Windows scheduler to provide the desired determinism and hard real-time response.
The communication of the real-time subsystem and the
Windows operating system is established using pointers on
a shared memory. While the user interface of the ISG-

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NC runs inside the Windows environment, the NC kernel

is executed inside the RTX subsystem due to its real-time
demands. The NC kernel computes the desired motor positions by inverse kinematics and subsequently transmits
the values to the drives of the cable robot using a bre optics bus as shown in Fig. 6. Furthermore, the bus is used
to receive actual values from the motors current sensors.
The received values are stored inside the shared memory
together with the reference positions using the high level
interface (HLI) data structure. The model runs simultaneously to the cable robot and access the HLI to obtain the
actual desired motor positions for every time step.

Figure 7: Real-time visualization of the platform trajectory of a cable robot with eight cables. The platform orientation is shown by vectors attached to the trace line. The
front area shows the platform behavior near the workspace
boundary

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On the other side, the shared memory is used to transfer

simulation results to the user interface inside the Windows
environment. For better visualization, the user interface
implements a scope for data plotting and a TCP/IP interface, that enables the connection to a 3-D visualization
tool on the same or a remote computer. Real-time simulation together with the visualization tool provides a good
impression of the platform behavior for a given trajectory
as shown in Fig. 7. To execute the simulation model inside the RTX real-time environment, the source and header
les generated by the Real-Time Workshop have to be integrated with an invoking real-time process. A simulation
scheduler as indicated in Fig. 6 is implemented to ensure
synchronicity between the simulation model and the real
robot. The simulation scheduler represents the main thread
and is started together with the superordinate real-time process which itself is started by the Windows user interface
on demand. During the initialization phase, the scheduler
thread allocates the necessary shared memory for data exchange and creates mutex objects as well as a timer object.
The mutex objects are required for synchronized access of
the shared memory and they can be globally accessed by
the Win32 process of the user interface as well as by the
RTX process. After initialization, the scheduler enters the
main loop which contains routines for instruction and error
handling and starts the timer object which controls the simulation speed by calling the simulation thread with a specied rate. For real-time simulation, the specied rate has
to coincide with the integrator step size predened by the
Simulink model. The simulation thread contains the actual
simulation model and functions for instruction processing.
Access to the included simulation model during runtime is
basically provided by the simulation models step function
and two public structures which contain the desired motor angles i and the simulation results for the quantities
x, l respectively. The simulation step function computes
a single integration time step using the public input structure together with the local system states and stores the result in the public output structure. From that,the simulation
thread computes the next n integration steps by calling the
simulation step function n times for every thread call and
stores the simulation results inside the shared memory. An
increasing n allows to reduces overhead, but results in an
increasing zero-order hold behavior for the input values.
It is obvious that the data exchange between the Windows
user interface and the simulation thread has to be synchronized to avoid data corruption. Data capturing with a sampling frequency of 100 1/s on the RTX side requires an access time less than 10 ms on the Windows side, which can
not be guaranteed due to the time-variant response behavior caused by the Win32 architecture. A buffer mechanism
is necessary to regard the time-critical runtime behavior as
well as the large data volume which has to be transferred
from the real-time environment to the Windows environment within a short period of time. Therefore, a triple
buffer is set up inside the shared memory which can be simultaneously accessed by the simulation thread as well as

ISBN 978-3-8007-3273-9
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by the Win32 user interface. Buffer swapping and access

rights are managed by a mutex. While time critical functions, needed for the simulation model, are implemented
inside the RTX environment, every other functionality is
realized inside the Win32 environment, which enables the
use of high-level programming languages such as C#. To
make use of the advantages brought along by C# an the
NET. framework without marshalling the entire real-time
application programming interface (RT-API), a dynamic
link library (DLL) is written. The DLL itself is using the C
language and serves as an interface between C# and the RTAPI by performing low level tasks as shared memory access, synchronization, and process handling. Therefrom,
the user interface communicates with the real-time environment by marshalling the functions that are provided by
the DLL.

System Validation

The complexity of the model, caused by the number of

coupled equations and the possible high system dimension
makes it difcult to nd errors during the implementation
process. The overall model is based on physical equations
which allows to check the model implementation for consistency by using the principle of conservation of energy.
In contrast to the n-dimensional state space vectors and
equations of the motors, winches, and cables of a robot
with n cables, the system energy can be represented by a
scalar value summarizing the energy of the individual units
as indicated in Fig. 8. The system input energy is dened
by the motors input energy WSM,in , that is transferred by
the winches and cables to the platform considering energy
dissipation.
VL12 WR12

K Winch WWinch,damp

VCable WCable

VP K P WP,damp

WSM,in

Motors

Winches

Cables

Platform

Figure 8: Energy ow of the individual subsystems

WR12,i , WWinch,damp,i , WCable,i , and WP,damp refer to the dissipated system energy caused by the winding resistance,
winch friction as well as cable and platform damping, respectively.
Furthermore, the subsystems store energy in terms of potential and kinetic energy. VL12,i , VCable,i and VP regard
the potential energy of the winding inductance, cables, and
platform while KWinch,i and KP regard the kinetic energy
of the winch mechanics and platform, respectively. From

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that the energy balance of the whole system is computed

with
WBalance = WSM,in

n


n


(WR12,i + VL12,i )

i=1

(KWinch,i + WWinch,damp,i )

i=1

n


(WCable,i + VCable,i )

i=1
!

VP KP WP,damp = 0.

(27)

Deviation (T=30s)

Moving the platform along the circular trajectory indicated

by Fig. 10 and using Eq. (27) to compute the energy balance after 30 s simulation time yields a small error which
is caused by numerical integration and depends on the integration step size as shown in Fig. 9.
104
106
108
105

104
Step size [s]

Figure 9: Energy balance after a simulation time T=30 s

using an increasing integration step size.
Further validation of the robot model is done by comparison of the actual platform trajectory with a simulated trajectory using a Leica laser tracker system for position determination with a sample rate of 1 ms. Figure 10 shows
the measured and simulated circular trajectory respective
the xy- and xz-plane with a maximum diameter of 600 mm
and a velocity of 0.9 m/s, while Figure 11 shows the platform movement in direction of the x-axis with respect to
time. The maximum positional deviation of the simulated
trajectory respective the measured trajectory amounts to 5
mm for the movement in the xy-plane and 9 mm for the
xz-plane. Additionally, the motors internal current sensors are used to obtain the motor torques for comparison
against the simulated torques with a sample rate of 1 ms as
shown in Fig. 11 for four winches.
The quantitative difference of simulation and measurement
results from uncertainties in the initial conditions, model
parametrization, and neglected structural elements. Regarding to the initial conditions, the initial cable tension
of an individual cable can not be measured and diverge
from the cable tension used in the model. Furthermore
the initial pose of the platform may diverge from the pose
in the model, since only one reference point of the platform is measured by the laser tracker. Subsidence of the
cables and winch mechanics causes further uncertainties.
Regarding the dynamic behavior of the mobile platform,
the not modeled compliance of the robot frame causes os-

ISBN 978-3-8007-3273-9
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cillations that are superimposed with the platform motion.

The robot frame is not modeled since it is considered an
auxiliary structure, which can be replaced by arbitrary motor foundations. Concrete walls for example would be an
ideal foundation without a signicant momentum. New
force sensors that will be applied between the cables and
winches will lead to improved initial conditions and additional measurements for system validation.

Conclusions

In this paper a mechatronic model of the cable robot

IPAnema was presented including the mechanical submodels for platform dynamics, cable behavior, and winch dynamics as well as the characteristics of the motors and controllers. The resulting system model was generated and
implemented into the real-time controller environment of
the cable robot IPAnema using Matlab-Simulink for modeling and the Real-Time Workshop for code generation.
Afterwards the coupling with the industrial control system of the robot was presented. By considering the energy balance of the simulation model the model was found
to be valid. Furthermore, the comparison between simulated motion and measurements with the IPAnema using a
Laser Tracker showed good agreement. Thus, the model
will be used in the future to plan and validate new geometries especially for large-scale robots as well as to design
and optimize the force control.

References

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0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4
0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4

0.2
0.4
0.40.2 0 0.2 0.4
x-Axis [m]

z-Axis [m]

x-Axis [m]

0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.4

y-Axis [m]

0.2

z-Axis [m]

y-Axis [m]

0.4

0.4
0.2
0
0.2
0.40.2 0 0.2 0.4
x-Axis [m]

10
15
20
Simulation time [s]

25

30

Torque [Nm]

2
0
2
4

Torque [Nm]

Figure 10: Simulated (dotted line) and measured (solid line) platform motion in direction of the x-,y- and z-axis.

2
0
2
4
0

10
15
20
Simulation time [s]

25

30

10
15
20
Simulation time [s]

25

30

Figure 11: Simulated (dotted line) and measured (solid line) torque of four individual servo motors with respect to time.

[6] Gosselin, C. (2008). On the determination of the

force distribution in overconstrained cable-driven
parallel mechanisms. Proceedings of the Second
International Workshop on Fundamental Issues and
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and Manipulators, pages 917, Montpellier, France.
[7] Gouttefarde, M., Merlet, J.-P., and Daney, D. (2007).
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