Leveraging embedded force and motion sensing from a push-pull device for teamed crane control
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Mandrekar, Parth Abhijit
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Abstract
Within manufacturing and construction environments, precise positioning of a heavy payload is sometimes achieved by a combination of gross control via a crane and fine control using taglines and push-pull sticks in the hands of ground team members. Failure to follow proper communication and safety protocols for hands-free payload manipulation could result in fatality. When the crane operator’s view of the payload is partially or fully obstructed, a signal person may be employed to relay commands to the crane operator. The goal for this project is to develop a new paradigm for collaborative communication between human operators and crane control operators. Our study focused on incorporating force and orientation sensing instrumentation into existing push-pull devices. Using these sensors allow ground team forces on the push-pull device to be mapped to a display informing the crane operator on desired payload manipulation correction.
Our new method of communication via display offers the unique advantage of remote operation of a crane in addition to safe operation when the crane operator’s view is fully obstructed. This method is made possible by a cable angle observer which utilizes the human force on the push-pull device as well as the stick’s orientation to estimate both cable angle and forces on the payload. These estimated parameters are relayed to the crane operator’s display indicating what the ground team suggests for payload manipulation. The main experimental objective in our study was using a push-pull device to maneuver and place a payload into an aluminum box. The ground team and crane operator communicated using our proposed control paradigm and an established verbal communication method. Equivalence testing results confirm that our method is equivalent to the established method in terms of impulse experienced by the box suggesting our method offers similar safety benefits to the current method although does so at a small time penalty.
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2022-12-16
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