Professor Caverly's Lab Awarded Best Research Paper at CableCon 2023
Professor Caverly and members of his research group Keegan Bunker, Samir Patel, and Vinh Nguyen were awarded the Best Research Paper at the Sixth International Conference on Cable-Driven Parallel Robots (CableCon) that was held June 25-28, 2023 in Nantes, France. CableCon is dedicated to research in the area of cable-driven parallel robots (CDPRs). This is a class of robotic systems best known for its use by the company SkyCam, in the videography of sporting events, although other applications are emerging. Their winning paper is entitled "Forward Kinematics and Online Self-Calibration of Cable-Driven Parallel Robots With Covariance-Based Data Quality Assessment."
The paper focuses on how to estimate the position and orientation of a CDPR's payload, while simultaneously calibrating for biases in the robot's sensor measurements. The key contribution of the paper is the introduction of dilution of precision (DOP) metrics, which are typically used for GPS navigation to assess the quality of data collected for calibration purposes. The paper demonstrates that these metrics can be used to quantify which data points contribute to improved calibration, which allows for high-accuracy calibration with relatively small data sets. Ultimately, the proposed methodology will allow for quicker and more accurate operation of CDPRs in practice.
Prof. Caverly and his research group are now looking into applying these techniques in their NASA-funded project on the development of CABLESSail, a solar sail whose altitude is controlled through the actuation of cable-driven structures.
More information on Prof. Caverly's research and the Aerospace, Robotics, Dynamics, and Control (ARDC) Lab can be found on his lab's website.