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This paper proposes a combined planning and optimization method that enables a dual-arm robot to lift up and flip heavy plates using crane pulley blocks. The problem is motivated by the low payload of modern collaborative robots. Instead of directly manipulating heavy plates that collaborative robots cannot afford, the paper develops a planner for collaborative robots to operate crane pulley blocks. The planner assumes a target plate is pre-attached to the crane hook. It optimizes dual-arm action sequences and plans the robot’s dual-arm motion that pulls the rope of the crane pulley blocks to lift up the plate. The crane pulley blocks reduce the payload that each robotic arm needs to bear. When the plate is lifted up to a satisfying pose, the planner plans a sliding-pushing motion for one of the robot arms to tumble over the plate while considering force and moment constraints. The article presents the technical details of the planner and several experiments and analysis carried out using a dual-arm robot made by two Universal Robots UR3 arms. The influence of various parameters and optimization goals are investigated and compared in depth. The results show that the proposed planner is flexible and efficient. This paper is motivated by a cleaning process in a factory that produces sewage press machines. The pressboard of sewage press machines could be as heavy as 1000 kg. Human workers need to flip and clean both sides of the board before installing them to the main axis of a sewage machine. Their solution is using a gantry crane. They attach the board to the crane hook using bearing belts, activate the crane to lift up the board. When the board is raised to a satisfying pose, the workers turn the board over by pushing it. Motivated by human workers’ actions, we developed the planner presented in this paper. We assumed crane pulley blocks in the experiments and analysis, but in practice, they may be replaced with electronic ones to improve effort and efficiency. Using the electronic ones will be a sub-problem since there is no need for pulling ropes. The proposed method is expected to help a company’s technicians better judge if they need a heavy payload manipulator or keep their current crane equipment while employing several intelligent collaborative robots to operate them. As a result, it may help to accelerate the upgrade of manufacturing sites while reducing reforming budgets. Note to Practitioners—This paper is motivated by a cleaning process in a factory that produces sewage press machines. The pressboard of sewage press machines could be as heavy as 1000 kg. Human workers need to flip and clean both sides of the board before installing them to the main axis of a sewage machine. Their solution is using a gantry crane. They attach the board to the crane hook using bearing belts, activate the crane to lift up the board. When the board is raised to a satisfying pose, the workers turn the board over by pushing it. Motivated by human workers’ actions, we developed the planner presented in this paper. We assumed crane pulley blocks in the experiments and analysis, but in practice, they may be replaced with electronic ones to improve effort and efficiency. Using the electronic ones will be a sub-problem since there is no need for pulling ropes. The proposed method is expected to help a company’s technicians better judge if they need a heavy payload manipulator or keep their current crane equipment while employing several intelligent collaborative robots to operate them. As a result, it may help to accelerate the upgrade of manufacturing sites while reducing reforming budgets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rubber tire container gantry cranes (RTG) are the most commonly used equipments to stack containers in ports. With four sets of ropes hoisting the cargo, the system dynamics become much more complicated and unpredictable when compared with traditional gantry cranes, which imposes higher requirements to the skills of operators. During the delivering process, large sway motion of the container is often excited by inappropriate manual operations, which badly impairs efficiency and safety. This issue is made even worse when considering the elasticity of rubber tire, wind disturbances, and many other practical disturbances. To improve the working efficiency of ports, an automatic antiswing trajectory planning method is proposed for RTG in this article. Specifically, reference trajectories are first generated to ensure that the trolley/rope accurately reach the desired position. After that, appropriate feedback terms are incorporated to online optimize the trajectories, so that the container swing motion is sufficiently suppressed even under unfavorable conditions. Lyapunov-based analysis is presented to guarantee the correctness of our conclusion. Furthermore, extensive hardware experiments on a practical RTG are performed to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. To our best knowledge, with concise structure and superior antiswing ability, the proposed method is one of the very few methods which can be successfully applied to the practical RTG systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For antiswing control of underactuated cranes, how to guarantee the converging speed of cranes through control design is essential but still remains unsolved. In this article, the adaptive antiswing control for underactuated gantry cranes with guaranteed transient performance under unmodeled dynamics and external disturbances is investigated. To sovle this problem, a set of filters are proposed to make the backstepping technique applicable for the control of crane systems. Then through variable transformation the position error and swing angel could be guaranteed converging to the origin with a given exponential speed. Hardware experiments are conducted to show that the proposed scheme achieves better control performance over existing methods, and it is illustrated that the proposed control scheme possesses strong robustness to unmodeled uncertainties and external disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When cranes lift payloads off the ground, the payload may slide sideways or swing unexpectedly. This motion occurs when the payload is not directly beneath the overhead suspension point of the hoist cable. Given that cable suspension points can be hundreds of feet above the payload, it is difficult for crane operators to know if the hoist cable is vertical before lifting the payload off the ground. If an off-center lift creates substantial horizontal motion, then it can create significant hazards for the operators, the payload, and the surrounding environment. This paper develops a three-dimensional dynamic model that predicts motions of off-centered lifts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method for calculating the power demand of the hoist motor in rubber-tired gantry (RTG) cranes with nonparallel cables has been developed to measure the energy consumption in a typical lift cycle. From measurements taken at the Port of Felixstowe, it has been observed that the peculiar geometrical characteristics of the hoisting mechanism cause the power demand to increase with the container height in constant rotor speed conditions. The change in the angle of the hoisting ropes causes an increase in torque load and power consumption. By using information extracted from the crane’s geometry, it has been possible to calculate the potential energy increase given the weight and vertical position of the container. The load torque on the hoist motor and the vertical speed of the mass have also been calculated, allowing for the modeling of the hoist motor power consumption when lifting containers with constant rotational speed. The proposed model has been compared to a constant power demand approximation, showing a higher accuracy for masses below 40 t. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In practice, cranes often suffer from various unfavorable factors, such as extraneous disturbances and friction. Moreover, there are always some unmodeled uncertainties that are difficult to be described with accurate mathematical expressions. These practical problems bring much challenge for control development and may induce instability unless suitably tackled. In this paper, in terms of the aforementioned problems, we suggest a new antiswing control scheme for underactuated gantry cranes. In particular, we construct an elaborate manifold and then present a nonlinear control law that keeps the system state always staying on the manifold. Without any approximation operations to the original nonlinear model, it is rigorously proven that the state variables converge to the equilibrium point when they are on the manifold. The developed control system is robust due to the specific control structure. Hardware experiments are included, which suggest that the proposed scheme achieves superior control performance over existing methods, and it shows strong robustness to unmodeled uncertainties and external disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gantry cranes load and unload containers from container ships. To ensure safety and operation, the deflection of their main beams under load should be analyzed. This deflection depends on the weight of the loaded container as well as on the position of the trolley that moves the container. For this study, a bivariate polynomial model is built to estimate the deflection based on these two inputs. This two-dimensional load-dependent model is developed in four steps in order to determine the shape of the deflection (dependent on the trolley position) as well as its magnitude (dependent on the container weight). A specific gantry crane was monitored with several sensors where five are inclinometer sensors that observe the tilt along the crane's main beam and two are tacheometers that observe the trolley position and the absolute deflection. By collecting data from 18 loading operations, the parameters of the deflection model are estimated. Based on this data, the deflection under load is processed dependent on the container weight and trolley position. The verification of the entire model shows deviations within in comparison with an independent loading operation. This quality is acceptable regarding the measurements used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A fractional–order control system is developed for rubber-tired gantry cranes. • The core of sliding mode control is enhanced by combining with fractional calculus and adaptive control. • The controller works well, holds robustness and adaptation when the crane faces uncertainties and unknown wind. • Simulation, experiment, and comparison to other SMC-based methods show the superiority of proposed control approach. Using three actuators for tracking five outputs, rubber-tired gantry (RTG) crane is found to be a highly under-actuated system subject to random wind due to working outdoors. Applying fractional calculus to sliding mode control (SMC), we construct an adaptive robust control system for RTG cranes under parametric variations and unknown wind. The adaptive feature is achieved by using an estimation mechanism for approximating five crane parameters and wind disturbances. The core of the sliding mode displays robust behavior against uncertainties. For comparison, another robust controller is proposed based on finite-time sliding mode. Simulation and experiment results show the superiority of adaptive fractional-order sliding mode control, in which the controller well tracks actuated states and stabilizes unactuated states despite parametric uncertainties and unknown disturbances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to calculate the maintenance interval time (MIT) of steel structure of a large gantry crane in shipyard and provide basis for a maintenance plan. By analyzing a mechanical model of the lifting process, stress spectrum and fatigue damage are calculated. Based on the fatigue reliability theory, rational MIT and maintenance strategy are suggested. Compared with the existing empirical regulation, the solution of this study is safer, cheaper, and more efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]