2019 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

Design of Cable Measuring System of a Robot

Spraying Pesticides in Agricultural Farm
Nguyen Duc Tai Nguyen Truong Thinh
An Giang Vocational College HCMC University of Technology and Education
An Giang, Viet Nam Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
ductai.mec@gmail.com thinhnt@hcmute.edu.vn

space of robots in agriculture is larger than other fields. The

Abstract—Cable robots have many potential applications for
structure of the wire length measurement system is used in
agricultural production due to their large, simple structure.
However, in the process of designing cable robots, we encountered cable robots with limited length of wire.
the problem of operating space of the robot. In order to be able to
operate in a large operating space, the length of the cable must be
large, which will lead to a very cumbersome and difficult to
measure cable system. In the scope of this article, we will introduce
our study of the direct wiring length system and its application to
cable robots. We have analyzed the advantages and disadvantages
of the types of cable length measuring devices, the experimental
results of the cable length sensor we designed and manufactured.
Therefore, our wire length measuring system has been researched
and manufactured to be used in cable robots with large areas.
Keywords—Cable-Driven Robot, farm Robot, Robot in
agricultural
I. INTRODUCTION
Since its inception, robots have been rapidly and
continuously developing in industries with different types and
uses. In the last three decades, robots have started to be
researched and manufactured for agricultural applications. In
order to reduce human labor capacity and improve efficiency
and quality of agricultural products.
With the aim of supporting agricultural producers to reduce
the labor load and the impacts of agricultural production in
addition to improving product quality. We have conducted
research, calculation and design of cable robot application in
agricultural production (Fig 1).
Cable robot is a cable-driven robot with a large range of
simple mechanical mechanisms suitable for applications that Fig 1. Experimental cable robot model
work on a large range such as fields and greenhouse. During the development of robotics applications in
Demand for robots in agricultural production is increasing agriculture, we found that cable robot is a robot with high
to offset the shortage of human resources in agricultural potential for application. Because, the operating space is large,
production. The types of robots used in agriculture currently does not occupy much space and flexible use time. However,
have some limitations. For flying robots, there is a limited time our research process has found that the current sensor
to use, when using the motors affected by the wind created by measuring devices are having a problem that the length of the
the motor. As for 3T robotics, it is difficult in the operating measuring wire is too long to be difficult to manufacture and
space. Cable robot overcomes the weaknesses of the adaptive the structure is too bulky. Because of this, in this article we will
robot when it can operate in a wide space with a simple introduce a new sensor structure for the expansion of the cable
structure robot workspace to meet the requirements of pesticide
application in agricultural production.
The cable robots are researched and applied by the world in
the fields of mechanical installation, aerospace simulation ... Our solution is to directly measure the length of the cable
However, there are very few studies on robots applied in instead of measuring it indirectly through the number of motor
agricultural production. The main reason is that the operating revolutions. With this solution, we have simplified the structure

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 2019 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

of the measuring system and expanded the Robot's working We have moment of inertia
space effectively. Our experimental results have shown that 𝐼𝑅 𝑎𝑐
with reasonable acceleration we can completely apply the 𝜏𝑅 =
𝑟1
(1)
measuring system directly to the cable robot.
Where 𝜏𝑅 is the torque of sensor rotation with inertial
II. STRUCTURE ANALYSIS enamel is IR, ac is the acceleration of the cable. r1 is the radius
The cable robot is position-controlled based on the length of of melting the sensor.
the cable corresponding to the required coordinates P (x, y, z). 𝐼𝑅 =
1
𝑚𝑅 𝑟𝑅 (2)
The motors have a function to release the wire appropriately to 2

control the P-head to the required position. Therefore, with: 𝑚𝑅 = 𝑟𝑅2 𝜋𝑏𝑅 𝑄𝑟
determining the length of the cable is important in the control
process. In which bra the thickness of tan and QR is the average
density of the drum.
Cable robot there are currently two methods of determining
the length of cables based on the number of motor revolutions: In this case, the sensor drum is cylindrical; there are
geometric centers and mass centers overlap.
+ The cable robot with a small operating range of short
wire length, errors due to overlapping cables in the drum of Follow the Euler-Eyeline formula
motor wires that we missed … 𝑇𝑤 = 𝑇𝑠 𝑒 𝜇𝑅𝛽𝑅 (3)
+ The cable robot with a large operating range of a large Where 𝜇𝑅 is a static friction coefficient, 𝛽𝑅 = 𝜋 is the angle
wire length when winding into the drum, the wire layers will of winding around the pulley.
grow on each other, so if the radius of the large wire and the
length is large, it will cause the error of the puzzle with the From the force balance equation
effect dynamic. Therefore, the special evaporation is specially 𝜏𝑅
designed to help the wire be arranged neatly in order. This helps 𝑇𝑊 = + 𝑇𝑆
𝑟𝑅
us to determine the exact length of the given wire.
From (1)(2)(3), we have the minimum force to prevent slip
However, this method has two main drawbacks:
𝑟𝑅2 𝜋𝑏𝑅 𝑄𝑟 𝑎𝑐
+ Cable receiver structure is complicated and difficult to 𝑇𝑚𝑖𝑛 =
2 (𝑒 𝜇𝑅 𝛽𝑅 −1)
handle.
Maximum acceleration so that the cord does not slip on the
+ Length of short cable. Causing difficulties for the sensor drum
process of expanding the scope of activities
2 (𝑒 𝜇𝑅 𝛽𝑅 −1)𝑇𝑚𝑖𝑛
𝑎𝑚𝑎𝑥 =
𝑟𝑅2 𝜋𝑏𝑅 𝑄𝑟
(4)
After researching, I propose a method to directly measure
the length of the cable. Then we will get the value of the wire
III- EXPERIMENT
length even if the wire layers are stacked.
In equation (4), we see the role of acceleration in anti-slip
The structure is directly encoder designed by the length of
for the sensor. We have been experimenting to verify the effect
the wire not through the motor shaft. The reason is that if
of acceleration on the accuracy of the sensor. Our experiments
through the motor shaft, the radius of the sheet will change as a
are carried out with the purpose of determining the accuracy of
result of the accuracy.
the sensor. Experimental methods are arranged like Figure 4.
With this new structure we will easily expand the scope of
operation and engine power for robots without changing

Fig 2. Diagram of the force vector of the sensor

Fig 3. Schematic experimental sensor structure

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 2019 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)

The motor is controlled by a PIC 18F4550 microcontroller. as the chart below.

The microcontroller will provide pulse and control the motor
direction. The encoder will feedback the signal to the
microcontroller to determine the length of the cable.
TABLE I. EXPERIMENTAL PARAMETERS
Variable Remark
Mass 3 kg
Encoder 400 pulse; channels A,B
r1 20mm
Motor MJ 60A – AC Servo
e (AB) 377mm
(Sect. Fig.3) (40mmx3.14x3;~1200 pulse)

The length of a moving cable is a segment e (AB) fixed

throughout the experiment. The motor will pull the wire from
A to B. After stopping at B for 3 seconds, the motor will release Fig 5. Experimental results with average engine speed
the wire from B back to A. At A, the motor will stop for 3 In Fig.4, when the engine runs at a higher speed, we see the
seconds before repeating the cycle. Count C variable is set to overshoot is also higher. However, in the second experiment,
100 to count the number of feedback pulses from the encoder. we see the maximum error of 2 mm compared to the required
According to the driver's parameters is command pulse position. This error is still within the allowed range of the
multiparton (denominator). The divisor of the of the input system.
command pulses is set here. Experiment 3:
𝐶𝑀𝑋
𝑓2 = 𝑓1 In the third experiment, we accelerated the engine by 10
𝐶𝐷𝑉
times compared to experiment 1. The error result was recorded
Experiment 1: as the chart below.
In this experiment, we let the AC motor move at a speed of
V. The speed will increase rapidly from a value of 0 to V. The
engine has been dragged and dropped 100 times. The error
value parameters are recorded as the chart below.

Fig 6. Experimental results with high engine speed

Fig 4. Experimental results with low engine speed In Fig.6, The third test, when we gave the fastest running
In Fig.4, the system is stable and the error is negligible. speed, although the encoder signal was sent well, the value of
According to the chart above, we see that when dropping the the cable was no longer accurate. This is due to the appearance
cable there will be a greater overshoot than a cable pull. of sliding on the empty surface of the sensor and cable.

Experiment 2: Experiment 4:
In the second experiment, we accelerated the engine by 5 In the fourth experiment, we accelerated the engine by 10
times compared to experiment 1. The error result was recorded times compared to experiment 1. However, in this experiment,

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 2019 International Conference on System Science and Engineering (ICSSE)
the engine was set to take 15 seconds to reach the maximum
speed. The error result is recorded as the chart below.
Fig 7. Experimental results with high engine speed
In Fig.7, the fourth experiment, we still keep the same speed
as in the third experiment. However, we will change the
dynamic acceleration time to reduce acceleration. The results
show that there is no longer a sliding phenomenon on the
surface of the sensor drum.
IV. CONCLUSION
Through these experiments, we found that the acceleration
of the motor has an effect on the surface of the sensor drum.
With reasonable acceleration, the deviation of the encoder
position is almost negligible. Deviation occurs due to
overshoot, the controller still remembers exactly the current
cable length
Through research, we have shown that using direct
measurement of cable length is feasible. This opens us up to
simplify the sensor structure and extend the scope of the Cable
operation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported financially by the Ho Chi Minh
City University of Technology and Education, Viet Nam.
REFERENCES
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Robots- Springer, pp. 388-389, 2018;
[2] Bin Zi and Sen Qian, Design, Analysis and Control of Cable-Suspended
Parallel Robots and Its Applications, Springer Science + Business Media
Singapore 2017
[3] Thaís Muraro, Henrique Simas and Daniel Martins, Kinematic and static
analysis of the cable driven spatial mechanism for bedridden patients, 2015
[4] Lung-Wen Tsai, The Mechanics of Serial and Parallel Manipulators, John
Wiley & Sons, 1999
[5] Dheerendra Sridhar α & Robert L. Williams II σ, Ph.D. Kinematics and
Statics Including Cable Sag for Large Cable‐Suspended Robots, Global
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2017
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