A dual joystick-trackball interface for accurate and time-efficient teleoperation of cable-driven parallel robots within large workspaces

There is an increasing number of applications (e.g. building construction and sport camera systems) for cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) due to its large workspace feature. Although the autonomous operations of the CDPRs is well studied, human command of the robots (teleoperation) is still very crucial to provide the intelligent decision for complicated tasks and dynamic environments. However, existing teleoperation schemes struggle to provide both fast and accurate commands of CDPRs that typically operate within large workspaces. Thus, we developed a novel dual joystick-trackball interface for the teleoperation of the CDPRs. The simulation and the hardware tests demonstrate the potential of the dual interface to maximize the accuracy and time-efficiency of the teleoperation of the CDPRs.