Time delay control of cable-driven manipulators with artificial bee colony algorithm

Cable-driven manipulators (CDM) are widely-used for their unique advantages such as light weight, low moving mass, high payload-to-weight ratio, and large reachable workspace. However, their complex dynamic character and low stiffness with flexible joints make the control design much more difficult than for traditional robot manipulators. In this paper, time delay control (TDC), which combines the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control method and time delay estimation (TDE) technology, will be investigated to build a model-free controller for CDM. PID parameters are reduced dramatically as TDE compensates for a large proportion of unknown dynamics. To handle the problem in tuning parameters of this controller, artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is utilized to obtain optimal parameters of PID. Finally, simulations are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the propose controller and the tuning method.