International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing Online ISSN 2005-4602

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12541-019-00281-z Print ISSN 2234-7593

REGULAR PAPER

Mechanical and Empirical Parameter Design on a Multi‑wound

Differential Pulley Winch for a Wall‑Climbing Robot
Sungkeun Yoo1   · Inho Joo1 · Jooyoung Hong1 · Jongwon Kim1 · Hwa Soo Kim2 · TaeWon Seo3

Received: 20 May 2019 / Revised: 11 November 2019 / Accepted: 24 November 2019

© Korean Society for Precision Engineering 2020

Abstract
This paper proposes a novel multi-wound differential pulley winch (MWDPW) component for assisting the ascending/
descending operations of a wall climbing robot. The robotic platform enabling rope access in dangerous environments (ROPE
RIDE) climbs vertical walls using a rope and embedded winch. The original winch installed on the ROPE RIDE was a single
wound winch, which had problems such as rope slip, velocity ripple during descending motion, resulting the bad cleaning
performance and unstable motion on the wall. These problems are mainly due to the concentration of traction force on the
rope because a small portion of the winch pulley holds the entire weight of the robot. Therefore, we have developed a new
winch, MWDPW, by using multi-wound differential traction pulley and pressure rollers to solve the traction force concentra-
tion problem by distributing the traction force along the entire wrapping angle. Compared to other multi-wound winches, the
MWDPW has the special feature of a differential gear and pressure roller to distribute the traction force and minimize the
rope slip. The tension of the MWDPW is analyzed using the basic capstan equation, and empirical results to minimize the
rope slip are presented by varying design parameters such as the winding method and presence of the pressure rollers. We
expect the proposed mechanism to improve the safety of a wall-climbing robot for wall-cleaning operations.

Keywords  Multi-wound winch · Differential gear · Mechanism design · Design of experiment

1 Introduction along the rope. It is important for ROPE RIDE to maintain

There has been a constant demand for a climbing robot to
substitute outdoor cleaners of high-rise buildings as the
number of high-rise buildings has gradually increased
[1–4]. The robotic platform enabling rope access in dan-
gerous environments (ROPE RIDE) was developed by the
authors to clean the façade of high-rise buildings (Fig. 1a)
[5, 6]. One of the important mechanisms of ROPE RIDE is
a winch that produces the required traction force between
a rope and the robot so that the robot can move vertically
* Hwa Soo Kim
hskim94@kgu.ac.kr
* TaeWon Seo
taewonseo@hanyang.ac.kr
1
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Seoul
National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
2
School of Mechanical System Engineering, Kyonggi
University, Suwon 16227, Korea
3
School of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University,
Seoul 04763, Korea
its velocity and position accuracy for achieving good clean-
ing performance and maintaining safety.
The ROPE RIDE winch mechanism has a specially
designed pulley with wedge-shaped grooves on a V-shaped
surface, as shown in Fig. 1b. The advantage of the pulley is
that the traction force increases when the tension increases
because the high-tension rope easily gets stuck in the groove
and the wedged shape compresses the rope tightly [5]. How-
ever, this feature causes adverse effects. The most significant
problem is rope slip during descending motion. As men-
tioned before, the pulley needs sufficient tension to ensure
the rope gets stuck in the V-shaped groove in order to pro-
duce proper traction. During descending motion, the Tfree
rope element enters the pulley with no tension and cannot
penetrate the V-shaped groove, as shown in the red circle in
Fig. 2a. As the pulley rotates, as in Fig. 2b, c, the Tfree rope
element is suddenly exposed to high tension, causing a sud-
den penetration movement that results in a velocity ripple
throughout the entire robot, as shown in Fig. 2d.
Because of rope slip, velocity ripples occur in a single
wound-winch (SWW). We discovered this phenomenon

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 International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

through experiments. Figure  3 shows the experimental

Fig. 1  a ROPE RIDE robot for wall-cleaning operation [2] and b
SWW pulley of the ROPE RIDE [1]
setup and results. We measured the rope slip and velocity
by repeating ascending and descending operations with a
winch speed of 79 rpm and payload of 28 kg. As seen in
Fig. 3, when rope slip occurs, there is significant ripple in
the velocity. Damage to the rope surface due to severe com-
pression by the V-groove is another problem with an SWW,
and jeopardizes the safety of the whole system.
A multi-wound winch (MWW) could be a solution
because the traction is distributed along the contact of the
rope with the drum or pulley, which is much longer than that
for an SWW like ROPE RIDE. An MWW produces traction
throughout the contact rope, which results in less traction
concentration. Traditionally, an MWW winch is commonly
used at port to haul heavy ships. There are several kinds of
MWWs, which are summarized in Table 1. The simplest
application of an MWW is the capstan winch. There is a

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Fig. 2  Mechanism of rope slip in SWW. The rope of Tfree enters the pulley and the error generates rope slip at Ttension

0.6 0.15
(a) 0.5 (b) 0.1
(c)
0.4 0.05

0.3 0
Veloity (m/s)
Height (m)

0.2 -0.05

0.1 -0.1

0 -0.15

-0.1
Reference Rope-slip -0.2
Measured
-0.2 -0.25
-10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time (s) Time(s)
High ripple
in descending

Fig. 3  a Experimental setup to measure the rope slip and velocity ripple, b the position of two repeated ascending and descending operations,
and c the velocity data of the experiment

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International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

Table 1  Types of MWW for different applications and its features [7–12]

Type Name Pictures Side- Load Driv- Features
ways distribu- ing
slip tion motor
×:
occur
○: do
not
occur

Capstan Capstan winch for sailboats × × 1 Sideways slip

Flange structure to prevent sideways
slip

Powered rope ascender × × 1 Guide mechanism

Sideways slip occurs in the transition
zone
Anisotropic friction drum to enhance
tangential friction and decrease axial
friction
Double-drum Double-drum winch ○ × 1 Two grooved drums
No sideways slip because of the
grooved drum
One drum functions as a guide mecha-
nism for the other drum
Capstan winch ○ ○ 2 Prevents relative velocity between the
rope and groove

Traction winch ○ ○ 2 Prevents relative velocity via equal

torque of the hydraulic motors

Multi-pulley Cable traction control unit (CTCU) ○ ○ 3 Individually driven sheaves

Active load distribution
Slip control

Multi-wound differential pulley ○ ○ 1 Differential pulley mechanism

winch (MWDPW) Traction distribution due to differential
mechanism
Multiple pressure rollers

capstan winch product specifically used for sailboats [7].
This kind of traditional capstan winch always has side-
ways slip along the drum-axis direction. The slip direction
changes according to the direction of drum rotation. The
rope coils push each other to one side of the rotating drum
so that the rope inlet or outlet is pushed away from the drum.
Therefore, there are flanges at either side to prevent the rope
from slipping out.
There is a famous capstan type MWW called the “power
ascender” [5]. The distinct component of the winch is the
rope guide mechanism, which has small rollers between the
rope to change direction of rope on the drum surface. The
guide mechanism divides the drum surface into the trac-
tion zone and transition zone, unlike the traditional winch,
which has a single mixed zone in which traction and transi-
tion occur simultaneously. The special drum called the “ani-
sotropic friction drum” is proposed to increase the friction in
the tangential direction and decrease the friction in the axial
direction because the rope should slip in the axial direction
in the transition zone.
The double-drum winch is another popular MWW type.
Each drum has multiple grooved surfaces and the rope is
wound around two drums. The rope can move from one
groove to the other between the two drums. There is no

13

sideways slip because the grooved surface prevents the rope
from moving in the axial direction and one drum functions
as a guide mechanism for the other drum [9]. Tension is
gradually accumulated along the rope and the relative veloc-
ity between the rope and drum increases because the elonga-
tion of the rope is proportional to the tension. This causes
heat on the surface of the drum and rope abrasion. This is the
common phenomenon of all the MWW. There are improved
double-drum winches to reduce the relative velocity with the
grooved ring, which have the same elongation rate as the
rope [10] and torque control between the two drums [11].
The cable traction control unit (CTCU) is an advanced
type of MWW that is used to deploy fiber rope for deep-
water installation in the offshore industry. There are two
main features of this mechanism. One is the active load dis-
tribution, as this mechanism can distribute the load between
the pulleys so as not to exceed the physical limitations of
each pulley. The other is slip control. The rotational speed
of each pulley can be controlled to reduce the accumulated
slip due to rope elongation [12]. However, there must be
the same number of motors as there are pulleys to be driven
individually. This CTCU mechanism cannot be directly
applied to the platform robot because of its complexity.
The developed MWDPW has three special features to
distribute the traction force well and minimize the rope-slip
compared to the aforementioned SWW and MWW. The
first is the rope-guided mechanism. Although the function
of this mechanism is the same as that of a power ascender,
the detailed structure is quite different. The MWDPW can
have three traction pulleys because of the guide mechanism
that detaches the rope from the traction pulleys so that the
traction pulleys are not exposed to sideways slip. The power
ascender requires a specially designed drum to produce trac-
tion and sideways slip simultaneously. The second feature
is the differential pulley mechanism for traction distribu-
tion just like the CTCU. There is a differential gear assem-
bly inside each of the three pulleys. The differential pulley
mechanism can distribute proper traction to the respective
pulley using only one driving motor. As mentioned before,
the CTCU requires several controlled driving motors to dis-
tribute the load. The third feature is the multiple-pressure-
roller mechanism. The pressure roller is an essential com-
ponent to produce the initial traction force so that the entire
traction force of one traction pulley can be accumulated
from the initial traction. Without the differential mechanism,
multiple pressure rollers increase the traction differences
between the pulleys, resulting in traction concentration.
This paper presents a novel MWDPW mechanism design
to reduce the rope-slip and velocity ripple of the climbing
robot for the safe wall cleaning operation. The effective-
ness of three features which are guide, differential pulley,
multiple-pressure-roller is verified through experiment of
the six design combination of three mechanism. The rest of
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International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the
proposed MWDPW design in detail. Section 3 presents the
theoretical foundation for the MWDPW design. Section 4
provides the design of experiment on rope-slip and velocity
ripple minimization by varying several design parameters,
such as the winding method and presence of pressure rollers,
and the rope-slip optimization results are presented.
2 Mechanical Design of MWDPW
Figure  4 shows the mechanical design of the proposed
MWDPW. In Fig.  4a, the ROPE RIDE design with two
embedded MWDPWs is shown and the MWDPW design
is shown in detail in Fig. 4b. The MWDPW is composed of
three traction pulleys, three pressure rollers, a geared motor,
and a rope. The traction pulley is located in series and has
a V-groove to increase the traction force. Three pressure
rollers are located at each traction pulley and can indepen-
dently press the ropes to the traction pulleys. The pressure
rollers can be easily assembled and disassembled by a pin
connection, which makes winding and unwinding the rope
and adjusting the pressure force easy.
One important component of the MWDPW is the differ-
ential gear between the traction pulleys. Figure 5 shows the
internal design of the traction pulleys. As shown in Fig. 5,
the three traction pulleys are connected by the differential
gear mechanism. The differential gear modulates the rota-
tion of each traction pulley such that the rotation of the three
traction pulleys is mechanically controlled to have little dif-
ference in the rotational angle. This differential gear mecha-
nism has an important role to distribute the traction force
equally and minimize the rope slip.
So far, the mechanical design of the proposed MWDPW
is introduced. It is very difficult to model the MWDPW
because it has many mechanical components and a compli-
cated structure. In this paper, we introduce the theoretical
interpretation of the effect of the MWDPW design on the
traction force and slip angle briefly and attempt to determine
the sensitivity of the design parameters through experimen-
tal validation.
3 Theoretical Interpretation of the MWDPW
Design
3.1 Theoretical Background on Winch Modeling
The basic capstan equation, which was derived by Euler in
1762, has become a basic tool for understanding both the
MWW and SWW [13]. There are there important assump-
tions in the equation. The first assumption is that the rope
radius is negligible compared to the capstan radius. Baser
International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
Fig. 4  MWDPW design. a
Two MWDPWs with the new (a)
ROPE RIDE design and b the
MWDPW design configuration
V-grooves on
multi-wound
traction pulleys
Differential gear
mechanism
Pressure
rollers
Geared
motor
Fig. 5  Multi-wound mechanism, pressure rollers, and differential
gears
and Konukseven used the basic capstan equation to predict
the drive-slip error of a haptic device [14]. They conducted
an experiment, and found that the result agrees with the
theoretical graph to within 10%. Such a high accuracy
stems from the fact that a string wire with a negligibly
small radius is used. The second assumption is that rope
is perfectly flexible, which means that the moment of the
rope is zero. Jung et al. [15] constructed a model by con-
sidering the diameter of a rope and the moment from a
rope. He also took into account the effect of the extensibil-
ity of the rope; however, there are no experiment results.
The third assumption is that rope friction follows Cou-
lomb’s law. The creep-rate-dependent friction law [16] for
the belt drive was analyzed by Leamy and Wasfy.
(b) Geared motor
Three traction
Rope pulleys
(free)
Pressure
Rope
rollers
(tensioned)
The MWDPW proposed in this paper is very difficult
to model because it has a relatively large rope radius, and
the moment of the rope cannot be reliable. In addition, the
function of the three pressure rollers, which are expected
to increase the traction force, is not easy to define math-
ematically. The differential gear mechanism is also impor-
tant in this MWDPW, but is hard to model theoretically.
In this paper, we analyze the expected performance
change due to only the multi-wound based on the theoreti-
cal background. After analyzing the effect intuitively, we
validate the performance experimentally. Modeling is also
valuable to increase the performance of the MWDPW, and
we hope to derive the model in the near future.
3.2 Multi‑wound Tension Distribution
and the Modeling
Figure 6 shows the tension distribution in an MWW mech-
anism. As the rope is wound sequentially, the tension is
reduced by the slip range of the winches. Through the use
of multiple windings, the tension finally reaches zero at the
free end. Note it is difficult to define the slip and non-slip
range mathematically, and the slip range generates rope
slip and traction force simultaneously during operation.
Figure 7 shows the tension according to the slip and
non-slip ranges. Figure 7a shows the tension graph of the
SWW case, and Fig. 7b shows that of the MWW case.
As shown in Fig. 7, by using the MWW, the tension of
the rope is gradually decreased, whereas the tension is
considerably decreased by the SWW. We expect the ten-
sion distribution to help minimize the rope slip, which
is further decreased by the differential mechanism. It is
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 International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

DC geared Pressure
motor rollers

Rope
Traction pulleys

Frame for test

<Multi wound winch> <Rope tension distribution>
Fig. 6  Tension distribution of the multi-wound winch mechanism.
αi and βi denote the slip range and non-slip range, respectively. Ti
denotes the tension, and at the end of rope, the tension is equal to zero
important to note that the slope can be changed by using
a pressure roller for each traction pulley, which is a very
important design parameter to be determined in Sect. 4.
Fig. 8  MWDPW prototype
Figure  9 shows the experimental setup to measure
the rope slip and velocity ripple during ascending and
descending operations. The test frame can move upward
and downward along the linear guide. The velocity and
position can be measured by a rotary encoder with a pinion
gear attached on the rack gear (E50S8-2048, Autonics).

4 Prototype and Experiments 4.2 Experimental Result for the Design

4.1 Prototype and Test Bench
The prototype is assembled as shown in Fig. 8. The size
of the prototype is 170 × 180 × 540 mm3 and the weight is
7.0 kg, excluding the rope. The parts are manufactured by
CNC machining, and a DC geared motor is used for the
actuator (RE50, Maxonmotor). We used fiber rope (DUO-
TECH 10.5 mm, Edelweiss). The pressure rollers can be
opened and closed easily by a pin joint, as designed in
Sect. 2, and CNC-machined pulleys are used for the pres-
sure rollers. The frames in Fig. 8 are for the rope-slip and
velocity-ripple tests and were made using an aluminum
profile.
Combinations
The overall dimensions and motors are selected based on the
design requirement and simple dynamic calculation. Based
on the basic design, we attempted to determine the effect of
various design combinations of pressure rollers and traction
pulleys with the winding method. As explained previously, it
is very difficult to find the effect of the combination theoreti-
cally because there are many factors that affect the results,
such as the rope diameter, friction model, rope moment, and
differential gears.
There are two ways to wind the rope around traction pul-
leys. One way is to wind the rope three times on three trac-
tion pulleys. The other way is to wind the rope twice around

Fig. 7  Tension according to the (a) Tension (b) Tension

angle (slip range and non-slip
range). a SWW case and b
MWW case
3,

0,

Angle Angle
3 3 2 2 1 1

Non-slip range Slip range Non-slip ranges Slip ranges

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International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
Rope
(tensioned)
Linear
guide
MWDPW
Rack
Gear
Rope
(free)
Fig. 9  Test bench to measure the rope slip and velocity ripple during
ascending/descending operations
two traction pulleys. The method of winding the rope twice
on three traction pulleys are three cases which is calculated
by 3C2. The rope must be wound around the third traction
pulley due to hardware limitations. In order for the differ-
ential mechanism to work well, ropes need to be wound
around the first and third pulleys. Therefore, two cases were
selected, one for winding all three pulleys and one for wind-
ing first and third traction pulleys.
The pressure roller is available in two ways, mounted or
unmounted on the traction pulleys. When the rope is wound
around three traction pulleys, there are a total of eight cases
calculated by 23 . According to the capstan equation, if the
initial tension is not generated by the pressure roller, the cor-
responding traction pulley cannot generate friction. There-
fore, in order for all three climbing pulleys to be valid, the
pressure roller of the first traction pulley connected to the
free end of the rope must be installed. Therefore, there are
four possible combinations with a pressure roller mounted
on the first traction pulley. These four combinations are on
the first line of Fig. 10. When the rope is wound around
two pulleys, there are two cases in which the pressure roller
should be mounted only on the first traction pulley or on all
pulleys. The combination of these two cases is shown in the
second line of Fig. 10.
The analysis is based on the objective function, as
follows:
f = w1 stdevvel + w2 sliprope , (1)
where stdevvel is the standard deviation of the velocity ripple
and sliprope is the length of the rope slip for one ascending/
descending movement. The optimal combination is minimiz-
ing the objective function. The rope slip length represent the
effectiveness of traction pulleys. If multiple traction pul-
leys generate the proper ascending force respectively, the
slip distance will be minimized. The deviation of velocity
reflects velocity ripple. The velocity ripple is difficult to be
predicted due to the complex interaction of traction pulleys,
pressure rollers and differential mechanisms. The combi-
nation that minimizes the velocity ripple will be relatively
easy to be analyzed in the future studies. In order to reflect
the two different dimension values of velocity and length at
the same time, each value is scaled up to a maximum value
of 1 and a minimum value of 0. wi is the weight for each
function, selected as w1 = 0.5 and w2 = 0.5 to reflect both
values equally.
The experimental results of the design combinations
are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. Figure 11 shows the results
on the six design combinations, and Fig. 12 shows the raw
data during the measurement of all cases. As a result, the
best combination is determined to be C5, and the second
worst combination is C1. The rope slip, which was 75 mm
on average in Fig. 3 for an SWW for a single ascending
and descending operation, is decreased considerably by
3 mm for a single operation. Furthermore, the velocity
range is measured to be 0.040 m/s, which is also a strongly
improved result compared to the velocity range of the
SWW, which is 0.150 m/s.
The optimal combination is determined to be C5,
which is very unexpected from when this experiment was
designed. This may be because the differential gear modu-
lates the rotation of the first and last traction pulleys while
the rotation of the middle pulley is not modulated in the
triple winding method(C1–C4). The velocity ripples in C1,
C2 and C3 shown in Fig. 12 seems to be caused by pres-
sure rollers because those rollers can disturb the tension
transition between traction pulleys. In the C4 case, the
velocity ripple is not shown but has the longest slip length
among triple winding cases and even longer slip length
than that of optimal case. For this reason, the middle trac-
tion pulley does not work appropriately as an MWW as
designed. In these cases, The effect of the pressure rollers
should be analyzed. Generally, pressure rollers help the
MWW increase the performance especially for reducing
the slip length. Slip length tends to be inverse proportional
to the number of pressure rollers as shown in Fig. 12. The
pressure force should be optimized based on experiments
or simulation in the near future.
There is some future work to be carried out based
on this research. The theoretical foundation should be
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 International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

Pressure rollers design combination

Active 1,2,3 rollers Active 1,2 rollers Active 1,3 rollers Active 1 roller
Pressure roller 3

Pressure roller 2 Traction pulley 3

Pressure roller 1 Traction pulley 2

Traction pulley 1

C1 C2 C3 C4
Active all traction pulleys
Triple winding
Winding method

C5 C6
Active 1,3 traction pulleys
Double winding

Fig. 10  Six possible design combinations for pressure rollers and traction pulleys with the winding method

Fig. 11  Experimental results of 0.600 0.0200

the six design combinations 0.554

0.500
0.500
0.446
0.427 0.0150
Standard deviation[m/s]
Average slip length [m]
Objective function

0.400 0.369

0.300 0.0100

0.0086 0.198
0.200 0.0073
0.0075
0.0064 0.0062 0.0050
0.0058 0.0060
0.100 0.0056
0.0042 0.0056 0.0045
0.0031
0.000 0.0000
C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6
Objective function Standard deviation Average slip length

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International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

Standard 0
C1 (Reference combination)
deviation [m/s] -0.02

Velocity [m/s]
-0.04
0.0086 -0.06
Average slip -0.08
-0.1
length [m] -0.12
0.0031 -0.14

Standard 0
C2
deviation [m/s] -0.02

Velocity [m/s]
-0.04
0.0075 -0.06
Average slip -0.08
-0.1
Triple Winding

length [m] -0.12

0.0042 -0.14

C3 Velocity ripple
Standard 0
deviation [m/s] Velocity [m/s] -0.02
-0.04
0.0064 -0.06
Average slip -0.08
-0.1
length [m] -0.12
0.0056 -0.14

Standard 0
C4
-0.02
Velocity [m/s]

deviation [m/s] -0.04

0.0056 -0.06
-0.08
Average slip -0.1
length [m] -0.12
-0.14
0.0062

Standard 0
C5 (Best combination)
-0.02
Velocity [m/s]

deviation [m/s] -0.04

0.0058 -0.06
-0.08
Average slip -0.1
Double Winding

length [m] -0.12

-0.14
0.0045

Standard 0
C6
-0.02
Velocity [m/s]

deviation [m/s] -0.04

0.0060 -0.06
-0.08
Average slip -0.1
length [m] -0.12
-0.14
0.0073

Fig. 12  Experimental data of the velocity

established based on the experimental data presented in
this paper. The optimal design configuration and param-
eters, such as the pressure force, are required to improve
the performance. Finally, the MWPDW should be imple-
mented in the ROPE RIDE system and the climbing and
cleaning performance should be analyzed.
After building the prototype, experiments to determine the
optimal combination of the traction and pressure rollers were
conducted. The proposed winch is expected to increase both
the performance, in terms of velocity and position accuracy,
and the safety during operation after this system is embed-
ded in a wall-cleaning robot.

Acknowledgements  This research was supported by the National

5 Conclusions
This paper proposed a new winch design with a multi-wound
differential pulley and a pressure roller to improve the rope-
slip and velocity-ripple performance. Three V-groove trac-
tion pulleys are operated by a single motor and the pulleys
are connected by a differential gear. For each pulley, the
pressure roller is attached to push the rope into the pulley to
increase the traction force. The mechanical description along
with the theoretical interpretation was presented briefly.
Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant funded by the Ministry
of Science and ICT for First-Mover Program for Accelerating Disrup-
tive Technology Development [NRF-2018M3C1B9088328(2018M3
C1B9088331, 2018M3C1B9088332)].
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8. Ball, N., Fofonoff, T., Schmid, B., & Walker, D. (2007). U.S. Pat- ing from Yonsei University in
ent No. 7,261,278. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark 2018. He is currently working
Office. toward his M.S. degree in
9. Shafi, M. S., Lu, J., Song, Z., & Fu, Y. (2015). Design and tension Mechanical Engineering at Seoul
control of double drum Winch system for deep-sea exploration National University. His research
equipment. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference interests lie in the areas of robot
on Information Engineering for Mechanics and Materials. mechanism design.
10. Blanc, M. R. (2007). U.S. Patent No. 7,175,163. Washington, DC:
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
11. McKenna, H. A. (1976). U.S. Patent No. 3,966,170. Washington,
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Davidson, D. (2007). Fiber rope deployment system for ultradeep-
water installations. In Offshore Technology Conference.
13. Capstone equation. Retrieved July 9, 2018, from https​://en.wikip​
edia.org/wiki/Capst​an_equat​ion.
14. Baser, O., & Konukseven, E. I. (2010). Theoretical and experi- Jongwon Kim  received the B.S.
mental determination of capstan drive slip error. Mechanism and degree in mechanical engineer-
Machine Theory, 45(6), 815–827. ing from Seoul National Univer-
15. Jung, J. H., Kang, T. J., & Youn, J. R. (2004). Effect of bending sity, Korea, in 1978, the M.S.
rigidity on the capstan equation. Textile Research Journal, 74(12), degree in mechanical and aero-
1085–1096. space engineering from the
16. Leamy, M. J., & Wasfy, T. M. (2002). Analysis of belt-driven Korea Advanced Institute of Sci-
mechanics using a creep-rate-dependent friction law. Journal of ence and Technology (KAIST),
Applied Mechanics, Transactions of ASME, 69(6), 763–771. Korea, in 1980, and the Ph.D.
degree in mechanical engineer-
Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to ing from the University of Wis-
jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. consin-Madison, USA, in 1987.
He is currently a Professor in the
School of Mechanical and Aero-
space Engineer ing, Seoul
Sungkeun Yoo  received his B.S. National University, Korea. His
degree in Mechanical and Aero- current research interests include parallel mechanisms, Taguchi meth-
space Engineering from Seoul odology, and field robots.
National University in 2014. He
is currently working toward his
Ph.D. degree in Mechanical
Engineering at Seoul National
University. His research interests
lie in the areas of robot mecha-
nism design.

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International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing

Hwa Soo Kim  received the B.S. Mechanical Engineering, Yeungnam Univ., Korea. His research inter-
and Ph.D. degrees in Mechanical ests include robot design, analysis, control, optimization, and planning.
Engineering from Seoul National Dr. Seo received the Best Mechatronics Paper Award of the IEEE/
University, Korea, in 2000 and ASME Transaction on Mechatronics in 2014, and currently working
2006, respectively. He is cur- as a Technical Editor of IEEE/ASME Transaction on Mechatronics,
rently an Associate Professor at Associate Editor of IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and Intel-
the Department of Mechanical ligent Service Robots.
System Engineering, Kyonggi
University. From 2007 to 2008,
H e wa s a P o s t d o c t o r a l
Researcher at the Laboratory for
Innovations in Sensing, Estima-
tion and Control, University of
Minnesota, MN, USA. His cur-
rent research interests include
design, modeling and control of
various mobile platforms.

TaeWon Seo  received B.S. and

Ph.D. degrees from the School of
Mechanical and Aerospace Engi-
neering, Seoul Nat’l Univ.,
Korea. He is an Associate Pro-
fessor at the School of Mechani-
cal Engineering, Hanyang Univ.,
Korea. Before Hanyang Univ., he
was a postdoctoral researcher at
Nanorobotics Lab., Carnegie
Mellon Univ., a visiting profes-
sor at Biomimetic Millisystems
Lab., UC Berkeley, and an assis-
tant professor at the School of

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