An efficient solver for the inverse kinematics of cable-driven manipulators with pure rolling joints using a geometric iterative approach

The inverse kinematics (IK) problem of cable-driven manipulators with pure rolling joints (CDM-PRJs) presents unique challenges due to the equal angle constraints and strict joint limits. These factors render existing IK solvers ineffective or result in substantial degradation of their performance. To address these challenges, we propose a three-phase geometric iterative method to efficiently solve the IK problem for CDM-PRJs, which is a variant of the forward and backward reaching inverse kinematics method. Our method begins by establishing a surrogate model for CDM-PRJs to handle the equal angle constraints. Subsequently, we introduce a geometric iterative approach comprising a forward reaching phase, a backward reaching phase, and a state update phase. Additionally, we devise two novel measures, the random disturbance measure and the branch change measure, to effectively address deadlock situations and asymmetric joint limits, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate that our method surpasses the inverse Jacobian method and the sequential quadratic programming method in terms of success rate and computational efficiency. Furthermore, our method exhibits generality across various CDM-PRJs.