points by dingdongditchme 4 days ago | 0 comments
Awesome project! What you've built is a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot, and since you are using gravity to keep the cables in tension it is a suspended cable-driven parallel robot. Using the four cables you are able to move a point in 3D space. I happen to know this because I wrote my phd on the accuracy of these types of robots and their kinematics. At that time Jean-Pierre Merlet was probably the most famous/prolific researcher on this topic (https://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Jean-Pierre.Merlet/merlet_e...). You may also have heard of a company in Germany trying to commercialize this technology on a slightly bigger scale: https://redcablerobots.com/en/. There is also a conference on these types of machines in Europe: https://cablecon2027.sciencesconf.org/ the original being organized by Andreas Pott (another high impact sholar on this).
I have not worked in this field for many years but had a fun time learning about a very wide array of topics.
[–] khriss 4 days ago
[–] dingdongditchme 3 days ago
hard agree! I've read so many insightful comments over the years. Didn't expect for it to be me one day! The project here is really cool and competes with the robots we built fair and square; and we had several engineers building and designing these.
[–] 4star3star 3 days ago
Since my elderly parent has fallen a few times and now must use a walker, I've often daydreamed of an overhead cable system hooked into a harness. Is there anything like this in development?
[–] dingdongditchme 3 days ago
That's actually exactly what J.P Merlet was researching about! But to be honest I am not sure if it ever got out of the university prototype phase. I know of systems in care-homes which are like movable cranes but they require big doors and even flooring like you would find in a hospital. Because handling cables is actually tricky and you have longer setup times than you would expect the only commercially successful cable robot that I am aware so far is the skycam other comments have mentioned.
[–] throwup238 3 days ago
It’s stuck in R&D for some reason [1]
[–] ajolly 13 hours ago
" death was ruled a suicide by the coroner"
No matter how niche the topic, if it's in anyway related to technology or science, you will likely find a genuine expert responding to you.
I just hope and pray this continues so that we have at least one place that is reminiscent of the old internet.