Augented heavy lift assist devices for enhanced safety performance

摘要

Heavy lift assist devices are important part of manufacturing facilities that involve large, heavy, or bulky material. Many devices are available that available that provide lift but not motive force augmentation. In these devices, the physical strengh of the operator is used to move and psotion the work piece. Due to large work piece inertial characteristics, inertial contributions from the lift device itswlf, and misuse of the assist manipulator, injuries may still occur. In this research, an approach is presented that provides reduce-dauthority actuation to the motive joijts of the lift device that allows for augmentation of the human motion forces, provides a means of correcting injurious ergonomic interactions, and allows for thigh rate energy dissipation for payload trajectory control and emergency situations. The approach is to provide low torque input controlled by operator hand motions. These hand motions move the payload under a centralized trajectory. generation scheme that uses modualted braking commands to impose motion constraints, such as object avoidance, resonance attentuation, and ergonomic trajectory enhancement. The system is implemented in a virtual reality robot simulator that allows for the investigation of dynamic characteristics prior to the protorype stage.