A cable-driven robot for architectural constructions: a visual-guided approach for motion control and path-planning

Cable-driven robots have received some attention by the scientific community and, recently, by the industry because they can transport hazardous materials with a high level of safeness which is often required by construction sites. In this context, this research presents an extension of a cable-driven robot called SPIDERobot, that was developed for automated construction of architectural projects. The proposed robot is formed by a rotating claw and a set of four cables, enabling four degrees of freedom. In addition, this paper proposes a new Vision-Guided Path-Planning System (V-GPP) that provides a visual interpretation of the scene: the position of the robot, the target and obstacles location; and optimizes the trajectory of the robot. Moreover, it determines a collision-free trajectory in 3D that takes into account the obstacles and the interaction of the cables with the scene. A set of experiments make possible to validate the contribution of V-GPP to the SPIDERobot while operating in realistic working conditions, as well as, to evaluate the interaction between the V-GPP and the motion controlling system. The results demonstrated that the proposed robot is able to construct architectural structures and to avoid collisions with obstacles in their working environment. The V-GPP system localizes the robot with a precision of 0.006 m, detects the targets and successfully generates a path that takes into account the displacement of cables. Therefore, the results demonstrate that the SPIDERobot can be scaled up to real working conditions.