Workspace delineation of cable-actuated parallel manipulators

While there is extensive literature available on parallel manipulators in general, there has been much less attention given to cable-driven parallel manipulators. In this paper, we address the problem of analyzing the reachable workspace using the tools of semi-definite programming. We build on earlier work [1,2] done using similar techniques by deriving limiting conditions that allow us to compute analytic expressions for the boundary of the reachable workspace. We illustrate this computation for a planar parallel manipulator with four actuators.