Abstract: The elastic disturbance torque of motional cable in the stabilized platform is always bigger than expected due to poor design. A virtual layout design method of motional cable based on modeling and motion simulation is proposed. The Cosserat elastic rod theory, which accounts for stretching, bending and twisting, is used to build the physical model. To find the minimum disturbance torque, a layout optimization model is built and the collision-free constraint, bending radius constraint and length constraint are also considered. By interactively and automatically changing the five parameters including position and pose of both ends of cable and the length of cable, the corresponding configuration and disturbance torque is computed to get the optimal design. Both virtual cable layout design and real cable routing are carried out on a testing case. The results of elastic disturbance torque curves show that our method can effectively reduce the disturbance of motional cable.

Key words: Cosserat model, layout optimization, motional cable, virtual design, stabilized platform