The Effect of Pulleys and Hooks on the Vibrations of Cable Rehabilitation Robots

Cable-driven rehabilitation devices (CDRDs) represent a widespread class of rehabilitation robots used to restore individual impaired movement capabilities by performing repetitive rehabilitation training of impaired extremities. CDRDs offer several merits, such as low inertia, high payload-to-weight ratio, modularity, simple architecture, and convenient for reconfiguration. In this paper, a model that takes into account the particular features (pulleys and magnetic hook) of the cables of a CDRD is presented. Experimental tests carried out with the modal analysis approach show that the model is able to reproduce most of the dynamic properties of the vibrating system equipped with cables.