Paper Info
Title
The NIST robocrane
Abstract
The Robot Systems Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been experimenting for several years with new concepts for robot cranes. These concepts utilize the basic idea of the Stewart platform parallel link manipulator. The unique feature of the NIST approach is to use cables as the parallel links and to use winches as the actuators. As long as the cables are all in tension, the load is kinematically constrained and the cables resist perturbing forces and moments with equal stiffness to both positive and negative loads. The result is that the suspended load is constrained with a mechanical stiffness determined by the elasticity of the cables, the suspended weight, and the geometry of the mechanism. Based on these concepts, a revolutionary new type of robot crane, the NIST ROBOCRANE, has been developed that can control the position, velocity, and force of tools and heavy machinery in all six degrees of freedom (x, y, z, roll, pitch, and yaw). Depending on what is suspended from its work platform, the ROBOCRANE can perform a variety of tasks. Examples are: cutting, excavating and grading, shaping and finishing, lifting, and positioning. A 6-m version of the ROBOCRANE has been built and critical performance characteristics analyzed.
Year
DOI
Venue
1993
10.1002/rob.4620100509
JOURNAL OF ROBOTIC SYSTEMS
Field
DocType
Volume
Mechanical engineering,Control engineering,Artificial intelligence,Robotics,Robocrane,Stiffness,Simulation,Six degrees of freedom,NIST,Engineering,Winch,Robot,Stewart platform
Journal
10
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
5.0
0741-2223
98
PageRank 
References 
Authors
18.18
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
James Albus110820.41
Roger Bostelman216732.16
Nicholas Dagalakis39818.18