Robot and Overhead Crane Collaboration Scheme to Enhance Payload Manipulation

2025-08-11

AI Summary

Industrial bridge cranes often rely on manual guidance for precise load positioning, resulting in low efficiency and high operational risk. To address this, this paper proposes a robot-crane collaborative control method. The core innovation is a dual-admittance control architecture: a position-based admittance controller on the robot end enables accurate end-effector guidance, while real-time interaction forces generate velocity commands for the crane, endowing it with compliant, bidirectional coordinated motion. Furthermore, force-feedback closed-loop control, position-dependent impedance modulation, and coordinated motion planning are integrated to ensure safe and stable contact during manipulation. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves load positioning accuracy and motion smoothness, while substantially reducing human intervention and operational risk.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Manipulation
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Planning
• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: User modeling and simulation for interactive and conversational systems

Abstract

This paper presents a scheme to enhance payload manipulation using a robot collaborating with an overhead crane. In the current industrial practice, when the crane's payload has to be accurately manipulated and located in a desired position, the task becomes laborious and risky since the operators have to guide the fine motions of the payload by hand. In the proposed collaborative scheme, the crane lifts the payload while the robot's end-effector guides it toward the desired position. The only link between the robot and the crane is the interaction force produced during the guiding of the payload. Two admittance transfer functions are considered to accomplish harmless and smooth contact with the payload. The first is used in a position-based admittance control integrated with the robot. The second one adds compliance to the crane by processing the interaction force through the admittance transfer function to generate a crane's velocity command that makes the crane follow the payload. Then the robot's end-effector and the crane move collaboratively to guide the payload to the desired location. A method is presented to design the admittance controllers that accomplish a fluent robot-crane collaboration. Simulations and experiments validating the scheme potential are shown.

Problem

• Enhancing payload manipulation using robot-crane collaboration
• Reducing laborious and risky manual payload guidance
• Designing admittance controllers for fluent robot-crane coordination

Innovation

• Robot guides payload using admittance control
• Crane follows payload via force interaction
• Dual admittance functions ensure smooth collaboration