A Study on Structure Design of Cable-Driven Picking Manipulator

Fruit picking is a seasonal and labor-intensive work. The industry requires automatic fruit picking due to increasing labor costs and variability in picking skill. High accuracy, simple structure and low cost are expected to make the robot be readily accepted and widely used. Cable-driven transmission is more preferable than traditional system for some of its merits benefiting the production of small and light-weight manipulator. In this paper, the design of a differential cable-driven manipulator is presented. Different way of cable-driven transmission are analyzed and compared. The selection of cable material and the way of cable fixation and preload are studied. The mechanical structure of the manipulator’s arm driven by a differential drive capstan is designed.