Qiu Yuanying

Duan Baoyan

Sheng Ying

School of Mechanical and

Electronic Engineering,

Xidian University,

Xi’an 710071, China

Abstract: Six parallel cables drive the feed cabin of a large radio telescope to track a radio source with a span of 500 m. Having a large span and a configuration of parallel robot, the cabin-cable system can be considered as a huge parallel cable robot. A scheme for calibration of the initial cable lengths is presented based on the relationship between the cable lengths and tensions. The calibration is implemented indirectly by tuning the initial moments of the six servomotors. The experiment of 50 m scaled model verifies the necessity and validity of the calibration.