robotics

Article
Force-Sensor-Free Implementation of a Hybrid Position–Force
Control for Overconstrained Cable-Driven Parallel Robots
Luca Guagliumi 1 , Alessandro Berti 2 , Eros Monti 2 , Marc Fabritius 3 , Christoph Martin 3
and Marco Carricato 1, *

1 Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy; luca.guagliumi3@unibo.it

2 Marchesini Group S.p.a., 40065 Pianoro, Italy; alessandro.berti@marchesini.com (A.B.);
eros.monti@marchesini.com (E.M.)
3 Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany;
marc.fabritius@ipa.fraunhofer.de (M.F.); christoph.martin@ipa.fraunhofer.de (C.M.)
* Correspondence: marco.carricato@unibo.it

Abstract: This paper proposes a hybrid position–force control strategy for overconstrained cable-
driven parallel robots (CDPRs). Overconstrained CDPRs have more cables (m) than degrees of
freedom (n), and the idea of the proposed controller is to control n cables in length and the other
m − n ones in force. Two controller implementations are developed, one using the motor torque and
one using the motor following-error in the feedback loop for cable force control. A friction model
of the robot kinematic chain is introduced to improve the accuracy of the cable force estimation.
Compared to similar approaches available in the literature, the novelty of the proposed control
strategy is that it does not rely on force sensors, which reduces the hardware complexity and cost.
The developed control scheme is compared to classical methods that exploit force sensors and to a
pure inverse kinematic controller. The experimental results show that the new controller provides
good tracking of the desired cable forces, maintaining them within the given bounds. The positioning
accuracy and repeatability are similar those obtained with the other controllers. The new approach
also allows an online switch between position and force control of cables.

Citation: Guagliumi, L.; Berti, A.;

Keywords: cable-driven parallel robots; position–force control; hybrid control in joint space; friction
Monti, E.; Fabritius, M.; Martin, C.;
Carricato, M. Force-Sensor-Free
modeling; experimental analysis
Implementation of a Hybrid
Position–Force Control for
Overconstrained Cable-Driven
Parallel Robots. Robotics 2024, 13, 25. 1. Introduction
https://doi.org/10.3390/ Cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs) are parallel manipulators in which cables replace
robotics13020025 rigid links for the actuation of the end-effector [1]. Using cables guarantees a larger
Academic Editor: Giulio Rosati workspace and fewer moving masses compared to other robots, allowing CDPRs to achieve
high dynamic performances even in wide areas. In most cases, the actuation system
Received: 30 December 2023 comprises a motor (with or without a gearbox) connected to a drum on which the cable is
Revised: 25 January 2024
coiled [2]. After exiting each drum, the cable often engages a set of transmission pulleys
Accepted: 29 January 2024
before arriving at the end-effector. Pulleys are also an ideal place to install the force sensors
Published: 31 January 2024
(usually load cells) necessary to measure the force acting on each cable.
The main disadvantage of CDPRs is that cables can only exert tensile forces. For this
reason, to fully control a robot with n degrees of freedom (DOFs) it is necessary to use at
Copyright: © 2024 by the authors.
least m = n + 1 actuated cables, which makes the robot overconstrained. The degree of
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. redundancy is r = m − n. In spatial applications requiring six DOFs, it is common to use
This article is an open access article CDPRs with eight cables, as in the case of the IPAnema family [3]. One of these robots,
distributed under the terms and the IPAnema 3 Mini (Figure 1), is used to test the control technique proposed in this paper.
conditions of the Creative Commons More information about the geometry of the IPAnema 3 Mini can be found in [4].
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// During the last few years, many overconstrained CDPRs have been developed for
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ different aims: in the logistics field for warehousing applications [5–8], for the construction
4.0/). industry to build and maintain building facades [9,10], or in applications that require

Robotics 2024, 13, 25. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics13020025 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/robotics

Robotics 2024, 13, 25 2 of 21

lifting heavy loads [11,12]. These robots are also helpful for rehabilitation tasks [13–15]
or for window cleaning [16]. CDPRs with high dynamic capabilities [17,18] for classical
3-DOFs pick-and-place operations [19–21] or more complex bin-picking tasks [22] are
particularly interesting.

Figure 1. IPAnema 3 Mini with the laser tracker used in the experiments. This picture is taken
from [4].

Regardless of the application, one common issue for all overconstrained CDPRs is
the suitable control of cable tensions. It is always desirable to have these in a predefined
range, in such a way as to maintain the cables as permanently taut (i.e., with a tension
higher than a lower limit) without damaging them (i.e., with a tension lower than a
higher limit). To achieve this it is common to compute a theoretical force distribution
for a given pose of the end-effector, and then apply a cascaded control to impose the
computed tensions in the cables. The problem of finding a correct force distribution is not
straightforward due to redundancy: different methods can be used for different purposes.
Many algorithms are based on linear [23,24] or quadratic [25] programming optimization
problems; however, the closed-form technique, first introduced in [26] and then expanded
in [27,28], or geometric techniques [29–32] are the most interesting for real-time applications
that require fast computations.
Once a force distribution is computed, forces must be converted into motor inputs,
such as torques [33], velocities [34], or positions [32]. In general, in order to be sure to
apply the desired tensions, the theoretical motor inputs must be modified by taking into
account the real force values read by the force sensors [35]. When the end-effector must
apply a specific wrench to an external object, a hybrid position–force control in Cartesian
space may be applied. For this goal, the end-effector DOFs are divided according to their
method of control, which is either in force or in position [36,37]. The same concept can be
used in the joint space to develop a different hybrid position–force control. We will refer to
this method as hybrid joint-space control (HC). This concept was first introduced in [38,39]:
the idea is to control the lengths of n cables of the robot to obtain a specific pose of the
end-effector and to perform a force control on the r redundant cables to obtain the desired
force distribution. Mattioni et al., in [40,41], further developed this idea by introducing a
method (based on the force distribution sensitivity index) that allows the r force-controlled
cables to be chosen among the overall m wires.
The present paper aims to extend the HC by presenting, for the first time, a strategy to
apply it without using any force sensor. The possibility of implementing a control scheme
that allows cable tensions to be maintained within given bounds without force sensors
decreases hardware complexity and cost. To achieve this, a friction model to estimate the
actual cable force from the motor torque is introduced in the control feedback loop. This
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 3 of 21

model is used in both the approaches that we will present in the following: one based on
the motor-torque reading (HC-τ), the other based on the following-error feedback (HC-e).
In particular, the HC-e method is, to the authors’ knowledge, unexplored at the moment.
Another notable result of the paper is to prove that force- and length-controlled cables can
be switched in real-time, which increases the workspace in which the robot can operate
with satisfactory performance.
Both controllers HC-τ and HC-e will be compared with other state-of-the-art tech-
niques, such as:
• the classical approach that exploits force sensors (HC- f ), as applied in [38–40];
• the nullspace control strategy (NC) proposed in [4,42], which exploits load cells to
maintain cable forces always positive without computing a force distribution;
• a pure inverse kinematic controller (IKC), which (as the new controllers proposed
in this paper) does not use force sensors, but it does not involve any correction to
maintain cable tensions within predefined bounds.
The comparison will be performed by analyzing the effect of the controller on the real
cable forces, as well as the accuracy and repeatability of the manipulator.
The controllers HC-τ and HC-e can be applied to all overconstrained CDPRs. However,
in this paper, they are mainly developed for light robots capable of fast movements. In fact,
the winches of these robots rotate at high velocities, making them particularly suitable for
being directly driven by motors without the interposition of gear speed reducers. Avoiding
gearboxes decreases friction in the kinematic chain, making the use of HC-τ and HC-e
controllers easier. Moreover, the practical applications in which these robots are involved
(e.g., for pick and place) commonly require continuous movements of the end-effector
most of the time, so it is usually not necessary to exert static wrenches. For this reason, we
will focus on modeling dynamic friction only, disregarding static friction. While complex
models for friction in the kinematic chains of CDPRs are available in the literature [43,44],
our work aims to test whether a simple model with few parameters can be used in the HC
scheme to obtain satisfactory performance. The advantage of defining a friction model as
simple as the one presented here is the possibility of making straightforward tests by only
using hardware that is already mounted in the robot kinematic chain. In this way, tests can
be repeated every time it is necessary, e.g., when some mechanical parts are re-designed or
substituted due to wear.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the kinetostatic model of the
IPAnema 3 Mini robot, the model of the dynamic friction in the kinematic chains, and the
model to compute the motor following-error from its torque. Section 3 presents the force-
sensor-free control schemes. Section 4 reports the results of the experimental campaign.
Finally, Section 5 summarizes the conclusions.

2. CDPR Modeling
2.1. Kinetostatic Model
The kinematic model of the IPAnema 3 Mini used for this work is taken from [4].
With reference to Figure 2, K0 is a coordinate system fixed on the robot frame, and K p is a
coordinate system on the end-effector. The pose of the platform in K0 is defined through
the position vector r and the rotation matrix R. For each cable, the position vector of the
anchor point on the frame is ai in K0 , whereas the position vector of the anchor point on the
end-effector is bi in K p , for i = 1, . . . , m. For the robot at hand the cable mass is negligible,
so that each cable can be modeled as a straight line segment di in K0 :

di = ai − r − Rbi (1)

If li = ||di ||, the cable direction is ui = di /li , and the force equilibrium of the end-effector
is given by
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 4 of 21

 
T T u1 ... um
A f+w = 0 with A = (2)
Rb1 × u1 ... Rbm × um

where A T ∈ Rn×m is the so-called structure matrix, f = [ f 1 . . . f m ] is the array of cable forces,
and w is the n-dimensional vector representing the total external wrench acting on the
end-effector. For the IPAnema 3 Mini, the number of cables is m = 8 and the end-effector
has n = 6 DOFs.

Figure 2. Scheme of the closure equation of the i-th cable.

The inverse kinetostatic problem consists in solving Equation (2) to find the cable ten-
sions. In rigid-body mechanics, this problem has, in general, ∞r solutions for a CDPR with
r = m − n redundant cables because there are n equilibrium equations and m unknowns.
Since cables can only exert positive forces, all solutions involving negative tensions must
be discarded. In many practical cases, it is desirable to maintain cable forces always higher
than a lower limit f min greater than zero to prevent cables from becoming slack and smaller
than a maximum value f max to avoid cable damage. One solution among the infinitely
many possible can be chosen in order to achieve a suitable force distribution. In this paper,
the inverse kinetostatic problem is solved by applying the method presented in [29], which
is easily applicable in real time. In particular, the minimum 2-norm solution of the cable-
tension array is used since this force distribution is continuous during a trajectory, and it
minimizes cable forces.

2.2. Friction Model

To control cable forces without using any force sensor, the main problem is to find the
correlation between the torque τi applied by the motor and the actual force f i applied on
the end-effector, namely:
τi = f i r D + τF ( f i , vi ) + τIn ( ai ) (3)
where r D is the drum radius, τIn is the inertial torque produced by the moving parts of the
winch (motor shaft, drum, . . . ), τF is the torque generated by friction phenomena between
the motor and the cable attachment point on the end-effector, and vi and ai are the cable
velocity and acceleration, respectively. In the IPAnema 3 Mini robot, no gearboxes are used,
so the drums are directly connected to the motor shafts. This means that the friction torque
τF is generated only by the motor, the drum, and the pulleys. Figure 3 shows a scheme
of one cable kinematic chain, representing the mechanical parts that generate the friction
torque τF , including the location of the force sensor (a Futek LRM200 JR S-Beam load cell
with a maximum load capacity equal to 25 lb). Since it is mounted on the third pulley, a
friction force f F makes the measurement of the force different from the real one acting on
the end-effector due to the friction between the third pulley and the cable attachment point
to the end-effector. In general, τF and f F depend on both the cable force and velocity. The
geometric and inertia properties of the mechanical parts of the winch are known, as well
as the desired force f i (found by the force distribution algorithm). The motion law of the
motor is computed through the robot inverse kinematics, which provides vi and ai . The
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 5 of 21

motor motion law allows one to compute the inertial torque τIn . Accordingly, the only
unknown term in Equation (3) is τF . To determine this quantity, it is necessary to build a
friction model by means of experimental tests.

Figure 3. Scheme of the robot kinematic chain and the areas in which the friction torque τF and force
f F are modeled.

An experimental study was conducted on the kinematic chain of one winch (Figure 3)
by detaching the cable from the end-effector. Different weights were attached to the cable:
0.28 kg, 0.51 kg, 0.90 kg, 1.39 kg, 1.90 kg, 2.68 kg, and 3.19 kg. These values approximately
cover the tension interval defined for the robot operation, from f min = 5 N to f max = 35 N.
The weights were moved up and down with trajectories reaching several values of steady-
state constant velocity: 0.25 m/min, 0.5 m/min, 1 m/min, 2 m/min, 3 m/min, 4 m/min,
5 m/min, and 6 m/min. The lower and higher velocities are called v L = 0.25 m/min and
v H = 6 m/min. These values are the ones where only the portions of the motion laws
with a constant velocity were analyzed. A scheme of the winch kinematic chain during
the experiments is shown in Figure 4. Pulley 1 guides the cable arriving from the drum;
pulleys 2, 3, and 4 are used to add the force sensor in the kinematic chain; pulley 5 guides
the wire to the end-effector. During the constant-velocity portion of the motion, the term
τIn in Equation (3) is zero, and f i = mg, where m is the mass of the weight attached to
the cable, and g is the gravitational acceleration. The torque measured by the motor is
saved, and its mean value is computed during different movements with the same constant
velocity in the same direction. In this way, two different torques were obtained for each
velocity and force of the cable, one for the movement in the positive direction and one for
the movement in the negative direction. By inserting these torques in Equation (3) as τi , one
can find the value of τF corresponding to a given velocity and cable tension for each motion
direction. The distinction between the different movement directions is necessary since
the results obtained with the experimental tests show different frictions in the two cases.
The constant velocity used to build the friction model is the one set for the motor, whose
value is supposed to be correct without the necessity of measuring the real velocity with an
external sensor. This is acceptable since the velocity set for the motor will be used as an
input of the final friction model in the control scheme.
During the tests for the estimation of the friction model parameters, the cable routing
in the first four pulleys is the same as in the working robot, so the friction that arises in this
part of the kinematic chain is the same during the tests and during the robot operation. The
same can be said for friction effects in the drum and the motor. However, this is not strictly
true for friction effects in the last pulley of the kinematic chain. During testing, in fact, the
wrapping angle is always equal to 180◦ (see Figure 4). In contrast, during operation, this
angle varies with the trajectory of the end-effector. Its value is always between 90◦ and
180◦ for the higher pulleys of the robot and between 0◦ and 90◦ for the lower ones. The
approximation adopted for the estimation of friction parameters is, thus, better suited for
the higher pulleys than for the lower ones. This is due to the fact that, in all the tested
trajectories, the force-controlled cables (namely, the ones in which the friction model is
applied) are the higher ones. The scheme shown in Figure 4 allows one to execute friction
tests by only detaching the i-th cable from the end-effector without touching any other
part of the robot. This means that friction tests can easily be executed whenever necessary
(e.g., if some mechanical parts change or the friction parameters change in time due to
wear of some components). This is the main advantage of the simplified friction model
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 6 of 21

introduced in this section; its suitability will be assessed by the experiments reported in
Section 4.

Figure 4. Scheme of the cable routing during the tests executed to estimate the parameters of the
friction model in the cable actuation chain.

By analyzing the set of points obtained in the tests, we chose a model for estimating
the friction torque that is linear in the force and parabolic in the velocity, namely,

τF ( f , v) = c1 v + c2 v2 + c3 f + c4 (4)

The function shape at the right-hand side of Equation (4) is chosen as the best fit for the
registered data. The shape is the same for the positive and negative motion directions,
but the coefficients ci found through a best-fitting procedure differ. Since our experiments
provide data to estimate dynamic friction only starting from the minimum velocity v L
(the tests conducted with smaller velocities showed little repeatability, and thus, were
considered unreliable), it is necessary to model the friction torque for velocities in the
interval [−v L ; v L ]. This was achieved by using a polynomial p( f , v) with degree four in
v for every force value, i.e., the polynomial coefficients are functions of f , and they are
recomputed for every input force value. In this way, the complete model of the friction
torque is
2

c1n v + c2n v + c3n f + c4n v ∈ [−v H ; −v L ]

τF ( f , v) = b0 + ∑4j=1 b j ( f )v j v ∈ [−v L ; v L ] (5)

 2
c1p v + c2p v + c3p f + c4p v ∈ [v L ; v H ]
The 4 degrees of p( f , v) allow one to impose five conditions for the computation of
coefficients b j ( f ):
• p( f , 0) = 0 ; this condition is necessary to represent the behavior of the dynamic
friction that is zero at rest (static friction is not modeled);
• continuity of the polynomial at the borders: p( f , −v L ) = τF ( f , −v L ) = τvn and
p( f , v L ) = τF ( f , v L ) = τvp ;
∂p( f ,−v L ) ∂τF ( f ,−v L )
• continuity of the derivative of the polynomial at the borders: ∂v = ∂v =
∂p( f ,v L )
∂τvn , and ∂v= ∂τF (∂vf ,v L ) = ∂τvp .
The resulting coefficients are
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 7 of 21

b0 = 0
3(τvn − τvp ) + v L (∂τvn + ∂τvp )
b1 = −
4v L
4(τvn + τvp ) + v L (∂τvn − ∂τvp )
b2 =
4v2L (6)
τvn − τvp + v L (∂τvn + ∂τvp )
b3 =
4v3L
2(τvn + τvp ) + v L (∂τvn − ∂τvp )
b4 = −
4v4L

The coefficients obtained for the friction torque model are listed in the first two rows
of Table 1. These data are obtained by applying the Matlab function lsqnonlin with
a step tolerance and a function tolerance both equal to 10−6 . The lsqnonlin function
implements a nonlinear least squares solver for curve-fitting problems, and it is used to find
the coefficients cin and cip on the right-hand side of Equation (5) that minimize the 2-norm
of the error vector between the friction torques computed with the model in Equation (5),
and the torques recorded during the friction tests. Figure 5 represents the friction torque
model described in Equation (5) with the coefficients listed in Table 1. The black points
are the results provided by the experimental tests. The model is considered to give a good
estimation of the physical phenomenon since the coefficient of determination [45] is higher
than 0.9 (if R2 = 1, the function exactly interpolates the input data). It is interesting to note
that the maximum value of the predicted friction torque is 0.15 Nm, which is approximately
22% of the nominal motor torque (equal to 0.69 Nm). This suggests the importance of the
friction model introduced in this section.

Table 1. Coefficients of the torque and force dynamic friction model. To use these coefficients in
Equation (5), the input force f must be given in newtons, and the input velocity must be given in
meters per minute, as in Figure 5. R2 is the coefficient of determination of the model.

i=1 i=2 i=3 i=4 R2

cip −3.64 × 10−3 −5.85 × 10−6 −4.66 × 10−4 −2.45 × 10−2 0.949
Friction torque τF (Nm)
cin −5.97 × 10−3 −2.31 × 10−4 3.10 × 10−3 2.52 × 10−2 0.995
cip −1.73 × 10−1 1.62 × 10−2 −2.51 × 10−2 2.93 × 10−1 0.920
Friction force f F (N)
cin −1.60 × 10−1 −1.40 × 10−2 1.25 × 10−1 1.81 × 10−1 0.986

Figure 5. Friction torque model described in Equation (5) and with the coefficients listed in Table 1.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 8 of 21

Experimental tests were carried out to develop a customized friction model for each
winch of the robot, but the results obtained on the control of the overall robot do not show
an appreciable improvement in performance compared to the use of the same friction
model for all winches (as long as all the winches and the kinematic chains between the
drums and the attachment points on the end-effector are the same). For this reason, the
same friction model developed on one winch was applied to all the winches. The details of
this analysis are not reported for the sake of brevity.
During the tests executed for developing the friction torque model, the data recorded
by the load cell mounted in the kinematic chain (Figure 3) were saved. These data allowed
us to derive a model for the friction force f F . This model is analogous to that in Equation (5),
with f F replacing τF and distinct coefficients ci (third and fourth rows of Table 1):

2

c1n v + c2n v + c3n f + c4n
 v ∈ [−v H ; −v L ]
f F ( f , v) = b0 + ∑4j=1 b j ( f )v j v ∈ [−v L ; v L ] (7)

c1p v + c2p v2 + c3p f + c4p v ∈ [v L ; v H ]


Using a friction model to correct the force measured by the load cells is necessary to obtain
an accurate estimation of the actual force acting on the cable attachment point [43]. The
measured forces are not used for the new control algorithms described in this paper, but
they were exploited during the validation experiments described in Section 4.

2.3. Following-Error Model

As an alternative to using the motor torque in the feedback loop to control the cable
forces (see Section 3), we propose using the so-called following-error (FE), which is the
difference between the position set for the motor and the actual one. This is because the
torque that the motor measures is usually noisy, and it must be filtered before it can be used
in a feedback control loop. Filtering the torque means introducing a delay, which could
be a problem for fast movements. The FE has a noisy behavior too, but its oscillations are
usually appreciably smaller than the torque ones. Our experiments show that the FE can be
used in a feedback loop without any filter.
The IPAnema 3 Mini is equipped with Beckhoff servomotors AM3121-0201 connected
to Beckhoff EL7201 terminals, which receive inputs from a programmable logic control
(PLC) program developed in TwinCAT 3.1 and running with a cycle time of 1 ms. The
motors are controlled in velocity (i.e., a velocity command is given to the motor by the PLC
program every millisecond), with a PI controller at the drive level. The position feedback
loop is closed in the PLC program with a different P controller that was untouched in this
work. If the integral part of the PI controller of the drive is removed, a pure proportional
controller designed only through its gain K p acts on the motor. In this configuration, when
an external torque is applied to the motor shaft, the latter moves to a position that allows
the motor torque to balance the external one. Due to the proportional nature of the control
law, the position reached by the motor is different from the commanded one, so that an
FE arises. In practice, the motor behaves as a torsional spring: an FE on the shaft gives
a specific torque and vice versa. This behavior was modeled through experimental tests
similar to those used to model the friction torque. In this case, the tests were executed
in a static way by applying different loads to the cable with different values of K p . By
recording the motor torque τ and the motor FE for every test, a set of FE points (every
one corresponding to a given torque and a given K p ) is found, which provides, through a
best-fit procedure, the coefficient c f in the static model reported below (Figure 6):

τ
FE(τ, K p ) = c f (8)
Kp

However, Equation (8) is insufficient to model the FE during a movement. Indeed,

while executing the dynamic tests to model the friction torque, the FE was also recorded.
Even though in those tests, the complete PI controller at the drive level was used, an FE
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 9 of 21

approximately proportional to the cable velocity (and not influenced by the applied force)
was observed. The corresponding coefficient cv was obtained through a best-fit procedure.

Figure 6. FE model described in Equation (8).

To obtain the final model of the FE, the terms depending on the torque and the cable
velocity are summed together:
τ
FE(τ, v) = c f + cv v (9)
Kp

In this work, K p is always equal to 200. This default value was considered appropriate to
avoid a transmission that is too stiff (with a higher K p ) or too compliant (with a smaller
K p ). Tests with different values of K p were performed, but they are not reported here for
the sake of brevity.
In the experimental tests, the FE is computed as a difference between the actual cable
length and the commanded one. So it is measured in meters, as a length. The values of
the coefficients c f and cv are found with the same procedure used for the computation of
the friction model coefficients, i.e., by using the Matlab function lsqnonlin with a step
tolerance and a function tolerance both equal to 10−6 . Their values are c f = −0.511, and
cv = 8.893 × 10−5 , with τ expressed in newtons per meter and v in meters per minute.
These values lead to a coefficient of determination R2 of the FE model equal to 0.999. The
coefficients c f and cv differ by several orders of magnitude, but the value that multiplies
τ in Equation (9) is c f /K p = −2.55 × 10−3 . Working with coefficients with this order of
magnitude was not a problem since double-precision variables were used in the PLC code.

3. Hybrid Control Strategy

For the HC strategy adopted in this paper, the first step is to choose the pair of cables
to be force-controlled for a given pose of the end-effector or a given trajectory. To achieve
this, the force distribution sensitivity index σij introduced in [40] is computed for every
possible pair of cables i and j of the IPAnema 3 Mini. We choose to force control the pairs of
cables 1, 2 and 3, 4 because they guarantee σij < 1.5 N in large parts of the robot constant-
orientation workspace, as shown in Figure 7 (in this paper, the end-effector orientation
is always described by the rotation matrix R = I3 , where I3 is the 3 × 3 identity matrix).
Choosing a pair of force-controlled cables with a small σij (values of σij smaller than 2 N
can be considered practically acceptable [41]) helps to minimize the errors in the achieved
force distribution.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 10 of 21

(a) (b)

Figure 7. Workspace of the IPAnema 3 Mini with σij < 1.5 N when the force-controlled cables are 1, 2
(a) or 3, 4 (b). The yellow dots represent the exit points of the cables from the frame.

Once the force-controlled cables are identified, it is necessary to define the control
strategy that acts on these wires to obtain the desired forces. Figure 8 shows three schemes
in which the subscript “i” refers to the generic i-th cable. All of them present a high-level
PID controller (PID HL ) which computes the value ∆l to be added to the cable length li after
a multiplication with a scaling factor h. The locution “high-level” is used to differentiate
this controller from the ones that act on the motor at the drive level. The controllers differ
in the variables that are given to PID HL as input for the computation of ∆l: a force in
HC- f (Figure 8a), a torque in HC-τ (Figure 8b), and an FE in HC-e (Figure 8c). For all
controllers, li is computed (as the cable velocity vi and acceleration ai ) by the robot inverse
kinematics (IK). The force f i desired in the i-th cable is computed by the force distribution
algorithm. The scaling factor h is always in the interval [0; 1], and it is modified only during
the activation or deactivation phases of the controller or when changing the pair of cables
to force-controlled, according to the function

h = sin2 (α ± δ) (10)

α starts from 0 when the controller is activated and it is increased at every iteration by δ
until it reaches (or exceeds) π/2. Then, α is held constantly equal to π/2 (h = 1) until the
force control is deactivated. When the controller is switched off, δ is subtracted until α
reaches (or exceeds) 0. To change the force-controlled cables, it is sufficient to switch on the
force control in the new cables and switch it off in the old ones. The shape of the function
on the right-hand side of Equation (10) is chosen in order to have a smooth transition of the
coefficient h from 0 to 1 during the activation and deactivation of the controller.
The scheme in Figure 8a (HC- f ) is the simplest, and it represents the situation in which
force sensors are used. In this case, f act is the force measured by the load cell mounted
in the kinematic chain of cable i. The high-level PID controller compares f act with the
desired one f set,i , which is computed by correcting the output force of the force distribution
algorithm f i with the friction force f F estimated through the model in Equation (7). For the
computation of f F , the theoretical values f i and vi are used because they yield non-noisy
results. Once the cable length li is corrected with h∆l, it is fed to the proportional controller
for the position feedback loop (PposLoop ) in the PLC, which computes a reference velocity to
give as input to the PI controller (PIdrive ) of the motor (M) drive. The position-controlled
cables do not need the computation of ∆l, so in this case, li is directly input into PposLoop .
The scheme in Figure 8b (HC-τ) is the first to force-control cable i without using the
load cell. Here, the high-level PID controller takes as input the actual torque given by the
motor τact and the torque τi that we wish to command to the motor to obtain force f i in the
cable. τi is computed using Equation (3), where the friction torque τF is estimated by the
model in Equation (5). JD is the inertia of all the moving parts connected to the motor shaft.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 11 of 21

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 8. Control schemes applied to force-controlled cables by using (a) force sensor feedback, HC- f ;
(b) motor-torque feedback, HC-τ; and (c) FE feedback, HC-e.

Finally, the scheme in Figure 8c (HC-e) allows control of the cable i by force by using
the motor FE. Here, after the computation of torque τi , the model in Equation (9) is used to
compute the FE that is desired on motor i (FEset ) to generate force f i . This FE is one of the
two inputs of the high-level PID controller, while the other is the actual FE measured by
the motor (FEact ). In this case, a pure proportional controller with a gain K p = 200 is used
at the drive level (Pdrive ). It is interesting to note that, in this case, the position-controlled
cables that can be switched to force-controlled during the robot motion must also have
a pure proportional controller at the drive level to not change the controller of the drive
online. This can cause a small error in the length of the position-controlled cables, but in
practice this phenomenon did not affect robot accuracy (see Section 4).
The first tests of the HC were executed on a simple test bench with only two cables. One
of the two cables is position-controlled, whereas the other is force-controlled by imposing a
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 12 of 21

specific tension. In this configuration, all control schemes shown in Figure 8 were tested
to tune the controller parameters with a heuristic procedure based on the Ziegler–Nichols
method [46]. The transfer function that describes the high-level PID controller in the
Laplace domain is  
1 Tv s
G (s) = K HL 1 + + (11)
Ti s 1 + Td s
The parameters to be identified are the proportional gain K HL , the integral action time Ti ,
the derivative action time Tv , and the damping time Td . The values found for the three
controllers shown in the schemes of Figure 8 are listed in Table 2. When Tv = 0, and thus
Td = 0, the derivative part of the controller is switched off and it becomes a PI controller.
This happens for the controllers HC-τ and HC-e, because the values of FE and torque
given by the motor (even if the torque is smoothed with a filter) are affected by some noise
and using noisy inputs in the controller when the derivative part is switched on results in
unwanted vibrations on the motor shaft.

Table 2. Parameters of the three different high-level PID controllers shown in Figure 8.

Controller KH L Ti (ms) Tv (ms) Td (ms)

HC- f 3.0 × 10−4 70 15 5
HC-τ 2.0 × 10−2 200 0 0
HC-e 4.5 × 10−1 7 0 0

4. Experimental Results and Validation

Since the friction model introduced in Section 2.2 is valid only for dynamic friction,
the main problem of the controllers HC-τ and HC-e is the lack of precision in predicting
the forces when the robot platform is at rest. The situation is different when the load cells
are used because, even if the static friction is not modeled for the correction of cable forces,
the static force measures are still rather precise. However, for applications in which the
robot is moving most of the time or where it is not required to exert specific static wrenches
with the end-effector, it is only important to maintain the cables taut to prevent them from
becoming slack during motion.
Accordingly, the tests are executed on dynamic trajectories (shown in Figure 9) as-
signed to the end-effector. One triangular and one circular motion law are defined in the
workspace of the robot with σ12 < 1.5 N (Figure 7a), and the other two in the workspace of
the robot where σ34 < 1.5 N (Figure 7b). The rectangular motion law is built so it passes
through the plane y = 0, so that the pair of force-controlled cables must be changed during
the execution of the movement. The paths where the force-controlled cables are wires 1
and 2 are plotted in red, whereas the paths in which the force-controlled cables are 3 and
4 are plotted in blue. All trajectories are purely translational motions, and they represent
the movement of the center of the reference system K p . Though different platform veloci-
ties were tested, in all motion laws shown in this paper, for the sake of comparison, the
end-effector reaches a velocity of 4 m/min after the first acceleration from a static position.
The force limits defined for the robot are f min = 5 N and f max = 35 N. In order to keep
some margin with respect to force oscillations and imprecision in the robot geometry or
wrench estimation, a minimum tension equal to 8 N is considered for the computation of
the force distribution. The wrench exerted on the end-effector is simply the one due to its
weight and inertia, which is computed from the platform mass (0.25 kg).
The forces plotted in Figures 10–13 are the ones measured by the built-in load cells
corrected with the dynamic friction model described by the coefficients in the third and
fourth lines of Table 1.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 13 of 21

(a) (b) (c)

Figure 9. Robot trajectories in the experimental tests. The paths where the force-controlled cables are
wires 1, 2 are plotted in red, whereas the ones in which the force-controlled cables are wires 3, 4 are
plotted in blue. (a) Triangular trajectories (b) Circular trajectories (c) Rectangular trajectory.

Figure 10. Examples of the evolution in time of the cable tensions in the force-controlled cables for
the triangular (plots in the first row) and circular (plots in the second row) red trajectories in Figure 9.
Different controllers are considered: controller HC- f , controller HC-τ, controller HC-e, controller
HC-τ without the friction torque model. Solid lines represent measured forces, whereas dashed lines
represent the theoretical forces computed through the force distribution algorithm.

4.1. Comparison between the Hybrid Control Strategies

Figure 10 shows the evolution in time of the forces in the force-controlled cables for
the triangular (plots in the first row) and circular (plots in the second row) red trajectories
in Figure 9. When the controller HC- f (Figure 8a) is used, the measured forces (solid
lines) track the theoretical ones (dashed lines) computed through the force distribution
algorithm very well. The results obtained with the controllers HC-τ (Figure 8b) and HC-e
(Figure 8c) are similar: in both cases the actual forces are noisy compared to the theoretical
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 14 of 21

ones, but the evolution in time of the tensions is approximately followed. These behaviors
of the forces when applying the three controllers are observed also for different trajectories
(e.g., for the blue ones in Figure 9). In particular, the similarity between the forces generated
by the HC-τ controller and the HC-e controller suggests that there is no practical difference
in applying one controller rather than the other for the motion laws studied in this work.
However, these results are obtained by using a filtered motor torque, and the raw value of
the motor FE in the feedback loop. As mentioned in Section 2.3, filtering the torque could
be a problem for faster movements and, in this case, the HC-e controller could provide
an advantage.
The plots in the last column of Figure 10 show the effect of setting τF = 0 in
Equation (3), namely, neglecting the friction model in the HC-τ controller. It is clear that
force tracking becomes considerably worse. Moreover, in this case, one or more tensions
in the position-controlled cables go below the desired minimum value (5 N), which is not
acceptable. Analogous results are obtained if friction is neglected in the HC-e controller,
which confirms the necessity to model friction in the kinematic chains.

4.2. Comparison between the Hybrid Controllers and Other Controllers

To evaluate the performance of the controller proposed in this paper, the results
obtained by applying it to different trajectories are compared to the ones gained with
different controllers. The legend shown in Table 3 is used to identify the executed trajectory
and the controller applied in every test. The first number represents the controller used
during the execution of the motion law. The controller HC-e is compared with HC- f , with
the nullspace control (NC) presented in [4] (which was already developed and tested on
the IPAnema 3 Mini) and with a pure inverse kinematic controller (IKC). The latter is the
only method besides HC-e that does not exploit force sensors (the IKC is a pure position
controller based on robot inverse kinematics, without any action on the cable tensions).
The second number in Table 3 identifies the trajectory among those shown in Figure 9.

Table 3. Legend for the identification of the results shown in Figure 11 and Tables 4 and 5.

Test ij
Force-
Trajectory
i: Controller j: Controlled
Shape
Cables
1: IKC 1: Triangular 1, 2
2: HC-e 2: Circular 1, 2
3: HC- f 3: Triangular 3, 4
4: NC 4: Circular 3, 4
5: Rectangular

Table 4. Robot accuracy with several controllers applied to different trajectories. The errors in the
positioning of the marker are evaluated for a given test through the maximum (ϵmax ) and mean (ϵ)
value over an entire motion law.

Test ϵmax (mm) ϵ (mm) Test ϵmax (mm) ϵ (mm)

11 3.48 2.59 31 3.78 2.73
12 3.46 1.85 32 3.36 2.30
13 4.32 2.65 33 3.78 2.34
14 4.13 2.31 34 3.71 2.56
15 3.92 2.44 35 3.77 1.97
21 3.68 2.70 41 3.10 2.22
22 3.76 2.40 42 3.49 1.74
23 3.85 2.44 43 3.04 2.01
24 4.02 2.61 44 2.66 1.72
25 3.68 2.04 45 5.53 3.24
51 23.85 8.03
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 15 of 21

Table 5. Repeatability in mm over 15 consecutive trajectories.

Test ρmax (mm) ρ (mm) Test ρmax (mm) ρ (mm)

11 0.152 0.047 31 0.143 0.044
21 0.151 0.051 41 0.076 0.033

In evaluating the controllers’ performances, the evolution in time of the cable forces,
the precision, and the repeatability of the robot are taken into account. For the estimation of
the robot accuracy and repeatability, the position of a marker mounted on the end-effector
is measured with
a Leica AT960 laser tracker, which guarantees an absolute accuracy of
± 15 µm + 6 µm m . The experimental setup configuration is the same as used in [4], so
we can estimate an accuracy of ±33 µm, while the sampling rate of the measurements is
1000 Hz.
Figure 11 represents the evolution in time of the cable forces. During the tests 1j
(j = 1, . . . , 5) executed with the controller IKC, there is no control over the cable tensions,
so for large parts of the movements there is at least one cable force that is smaller than
the minimum tension (5 N). Moreover, in tests 13 and 14, the force on cable 8 exceeds the
maximum limit of 35 N. Without any control over cable tensions it is impossible to guarantee
that they remain within the given limits. On the contrary, with the same hardware (that
does not exploit the load cells for control aims), the controller HC-e allows the cable forces
to be maintained within the predefined limits for most of the movement. During tests 2j
(j = 1, . . . , 5), only for a few instants one cable tension slightly drops under the lower limit.
When applying the HC- f controller, which makes use of load cells, the situation is very
similar. As a matter of fact, in tests 3j (j = 1, ..., 5), the most relevant difference compared to
tests 2j is that the better tracking of tensions in the force-controlled cables produces less
noisy forces in all cables. For the same motion law, the points at which the tensions drop
under 5 N when the HC- f is applied are approximately the same as when the HC-e is
applied. As expected, the main errors between the theoretical forces computed through the
force distribution algorithm and the real ones are in the position-controlled cables. When
the NC controller is applied, in tests 4j (j = 1, . . . , 5), the forces do not follow the theoretical
values computed through a force distribution algorithm. The controller maintains them as
close as possible to the mean value f = 12 N and corrects them when they become lower
′
than f min = 7 N. The results are forces slightly smaller during the movement, but their
oscillations are more similar to the ones obtained with the HC-e than those with the HC- f .
In this case, the lower limit f min = 5 N is almost always respected during the motion.
Table 4 shows the results in terms of accuracy obtained during the same tests as shown
in Figure 11. The values in the table represent the absolute error (expressed as a Cartesian
distance) in the position of the marker between the set trajectory and the executed one.
The maximum and mean error over an entire motion law measure the accuracy. The
results are always similar for tests 1j, 2j, 3j, and 4j, with an error in the positioning of
the marker that has a maximum value between 2.6 mm and 5.5 mm and a mean value
between 1.7 mm and 3.2 mm. The differences in using different controllers are on the order
of tenths of a millimeter. They vary for different motion laws, so that we can consider
all controllers equivalent in terms of accuracy. Note that when the robot is controlled by
the IKC controller, one or more cables can become slack and this significantly degrades
the achieved accuracy with respect to that reported in Table 4. This was experienced in
a number of other tests (depending on the initial pre-tensioning of cables), that are not
reported for the sake of brevity.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 16 of 21

Figure 11. Evolution in time of the cable forces during the tests identified by the legend in Table 3.
f min = 5 N and f max = 35 N are the desired bounds of cable tensions. Solid lines represent
measured forces, whereas dashed lines represent the theoretical forces computed through the force
distribution algorithm.

Test 51 is the last in Table 4 that needs to be analyzed. Here, the triangular red
trajectory of Figure 9a is executed, but the controller is different from the others previously
described. The control scheme shown in Figure 8c is applied to all cables (i.e., all cables are
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 17 of 21

force-controlled without using load cells). Better force tracking than with HC-e is achieved
in all cables, as we can see in Figure 12. However, applying force control in all cables results
in poor manipulator accuracy, with a maximum position error of 23.85 mm, as shown in
Table 4.

Figure 12. Evolution in time of the cable forces in test 51.

Finally, the repeatability ρ of the robot is evaluated by executing the triangular trajec-
tory for force-controlled cables 1, 2 with the different controllers (tests 11, 21, 31, 41). The
repeatability is measured by computing the standard deviation of the errors in Table 4 over
15 consecutive executions of the same motion law. Table 5 lists the maximum and mean
values. The controller does not seem to have a high influence on the repeatability of the
manipulator, even if a slightly better repeatability is obtained with the NC controller.

4.3. Effect of Changing the Pair of Force-Controlled Cables

Some tests were conducted to analyze the effect of changing the pair of force-controlled
cables during the execution of a trajectory. For this purpose, the rectangular motion law in
Figure 9c is considered. The change in the force-controlled cables is managed as described
in Section 3 through the value of the scaling factor h in Equation (10). While cables 5, 6, 7,
and 8 are always position-controlled, the scheme shown in Figure 8c is applied to all the
first four cables. When the pair of force-controlled cables is switched, the value of h goes
from zero to one in the cables on which the force control is activated and vice versa in the
cables on which the force control is deactivated. In Figure 13, the effect of increasing δ is
analyzed on the evolution in time of the forces and the position error. The areas in light
blue represent the parts of the trajectory in which the force-controlled cables are 1 and 2,
while the areas in yellow are the ones in which the force-controlled cables are 3 and 4. The
controller used for these tests is always HC-e.
When δ = 0.0005, the change is very smooth and slow, with a smooth behavior in
the forces and the position error as well. The more rapid the change in the value of h (δ
higher), the more the ∆l applied to the length of the i-th cable is similar to a step. The time
necessary for the change in the force-controlled cables can be computed from Equation (10)
by considering that α must reach (or exceed) π/2 starting from zero with an increment
equal to δ every millisecond (the cycle time of the PLC program). When δ = 0.0005, the
change happens in 3142 ms; when δ = 0.02, it takes 79 ms; finally, when δ = 0.5, the
change is almost a step since it takes only 4 ms. For δ = 0.02 or δ = 0.5, even though the
forces quickly drop during the change, they do not become smaller than 5 N; however, the
command given to the motor produces a sudden change in the position of the platform that
is visible in the plots of the errors ϵ (difference between the set position and the executed
one). Values of δ between 0.0005 and 0.02 seem appropriate for the executed tests.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 18 of 21

Figure 13. The plots show the evolution in time of cable forces (plots in the first row) and position
error (plots in the second row) when force-controlled cables are changed for increasing values of δ.
The areas in light blue represent the parts of the trajectory in which the force-controlled cables are 1
and 2, while the areas in yellow are the ones in which the force-controlled cables are 3 and 4.

5. Conclusions
This work extends the hybrid position–force control strategy (HC) that was first
introduced in [38,39] and later enhanced in [40,41] for overconstrained CDPRs with n
DOFs: n cables of the robot are position-controlled, whereas the redundant cables are
force-controlled. The main contribution of this work was to apply the HC without using
force sensors, which decreases the hardware complexity and cost. To this aim a simple
friction model was used to estimate the correlation between the force applied to a cable
and the torque given by the motor. Also, a model was introduced for estimating the motor
following-error (FE) for a given motor torque when a pure proportional controller is used
at the drive level.
Two controllers were proposed: the first one uses the motor torque as an input (HC-τ),
while the second exploits the motor FE (HC-e). Using the FE or the torque in the feedback
loop gave similar results in the tests executed in this work for rather slow trajectories. It is
conjectured that HC-e may work better for fast movements, but confirming this will be the
objective of future research. The results obtained in the experimental tests on several motion
laws show good behavior of the HC-e controller when compared to the classical HC- f
approach applied in [38–40] or the nullspace control method (NC) presented in [4], both of
which exploit the readings of force sensors mounted in the robot. Cable force tracking was
accurate enough to keep the tensions within the force limits. The HC-e controller proved
much more effective than a pure inverse kinematic controller (IKC), the only other method
that does not use load cells for control purposes. IKC could not guarantee to maintain
cable forces within the given limits. The accuracy and repeatability obtained with the HC-e
controller were almost the same as the other two methods that use force sensors: the mean
value of the maximum error over the considered trajectories was 3.80 mm for the HC-e
controller, 3.68 mm for the HC- f controller, and 3.56 mm for the NC controller. Finally,
the effect of changing the pair of force-controlled cables during the robot movement was
analyzed, demonstrating that this change can be effectively performed as long as a smooth
transition is commanded.
Robotics 2024, 13, 25 19 of 21

Future developments are necessary to prove the effectiveness of the proposed control
strategy for robots executing faster movements, which will be the objective of our future
research. The simple friction model described in Section 2.2 gave good results for the tests
shown in Section 4. This model is particularly suitable for practical applications because it
is possible to easily repeat the friction tests whenever necessary. However, it is not certain
that the same model would be suitable for highly dynamical motions. In this case, a more
precise and complex friction model (e.g., taking into account friction in the pulley bearings
or the influence of different wrapping angles of cables on pulleys) could be necessary for
better controller performance. These contributions, as well as the introduction of a model
for static friction, will be evaluated in future studies.
Finally, the tuning of the PID parameters in the HC-e and HC-τ controllers could be
analyzed to improve their performance, since the values reported in Table 2 were found
through a trial-and-error procedure based on the Ziegler–Nichols approach [46]. For the
aim of this work, these values seem appropriate, but motions involving higher velocities
and accelerations could require a different and better PID controller tuning. This analysis,
as well as deeper studies related to the stability of the proposed controllers, are deferred to
future studies.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, A.B. and E.M.; methodology, A.B. and L.G.; software,
L.G., M.F. and C.M.; validation, L.G.; formal analysis, L.G.; investigation, L.G.; resources, M.F. and
C.M.; data curation, L.G.; writing—original draft preparation, L.G.; writing—review and editing, L.G.
and M.C.; visualization, L.G. and M.C.; supervision, A.B. and M.C.; project administration, M.C.;
funding acquisition, A.B. and M.C. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of
the manuscript.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Data Availability Statement: Data are contained within the article.
Acknowledgments: This work was supported by Marchesini Group S.p.A., a leading company in the
field of automatic packaging machines, especially for pharmaceutical and cosmetic products.
Conflicts of Interest: Authors Alessandro Berti and Eros Monti were employed by the company
Marchesini Group S.p.a. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict
of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

CDPR Cable-driven parallel robot

DOFs Degrees of freedom
HC Hybrid joint-space control
NC Nullspace control
IKC Inverse kinematic controller
FE Following-error

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