A Cartesian Cable-Suspended Robot for improving end-users' mobility in an urban environment

In the near future, the flexibility and safety of robotic systems will allow them to interact directly with a patient without the need for an operator which will, at most, have to switch a system on or off. In this new scenario, end-users will have more chance of attaining enhanced independence and comfort in their daily life, even in outdoor activities, by using a simple and safe technology. In this paper we propose Cable System for Improving Mobility (CaSIMo), which has been developed with the aim of improving the mobility of end-users in an urban environment as regards traversing architectural barriers like canals or roads, when classical solutions such as bridges cannot be adopted. The cable system has been developed for large-scale handling (or aiding transfer) for applications in urban, civil and naval environments. The main issue of the system proposed, which belongs to the class of Cartesian Cable-Suspended Robots (CCSR), is that it can provide translational motion of the suspended end-effector, and may thus be considered well suited to a number of applications including that proposed herein. In this paper we focus our attention on a spatial version designed to improve the mobility of end-users in an urban environment. In particular, modeling for kinetostatic and dynamic analyses are proposed and discussed. The proposed system does not require structures of large dimensions, and its environmental impact can thus be greatly reduced with regard to other analogous devices. Moreover, it has a low-cost design if compared to other systems such as bridges, and can be installed and removed relatively easily. A laboratory prototype of the planar version has been built for experimental tests. Dynamic simulations of the large-scale spatial version have been reported to show the engineering significance of the proposed design in both nominal operation and critical conditions, i.e. in the case of a cable breaking.