Safe Tumbling of Heavy Objects Using a Two-Cable Crane

In heavy industries, large, heavy objects must be tumbled to access features on their bottoms and sides for assembly and maintenance. Traditional manual operations using a single-cable crane are high-risk, and difficult for less experienced workers. Automating the tumbling process is made challenging due to the presence of kinematic and static singularities which are shown to occur when a single-cable crane loses control over the block being tumbled. Here, an autonomous method for safely tumbling a heavy block sitting on a surface using a two-cable crane is presented. Two winches controlling a pair of cables on a crane are coordinated in such a way that a) the block cannot slip on the floor, b) the block is not lifted into the air, and c) the block is under quasi-static balanced control at all times. A control algorithm for coordinating the two winches is developed for safely tumbling a block without slipping or becoming airborne as well as for eliminating the effect of singularities. A small-scale prototype is developed and the control algorithm is implemented and evaluated experimentally.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2021

Author dc:creator

• O'Neill, Cormac

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Asada, Haruhiko Harry

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/139160

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/139160