Development of Power Assist Crane Operated by Tensional Information of Dual Wire

Abstract

Cranes and hoists at automotive assembly plant handle heavy objects such as batteries to decrease the physical burden on personnel. On/off button operations in such devices during fine positioning increase personnel mental stress. On the other hand, in power assist using force sensors which directly measure operating force, maneuverability is improved but we should be concerned about sensor weight, signal wiring, wire breakage and so on. Therefore, in this study, a power assist system driven by two wires is developed to improvemaneuverability andmaintenance. The method we propose estimates operating force and work load from tensional information on wires and controls the position of work by admittance control. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown from confirmation and power assist experiments.