A Flexible and Common Control Architecture for Rolls-royce Marine Cranes and Robotic Arms

Cranes are widely used to handle and transfer objects from large container ships to smaller lighters or to the quays of the harbors. The control of robotic cranes is always a challenging task which involves many problems such as load sway, positioning acc uracy, suppression, collision avoidance, and manipulation security. However, the low control flexibility and non-standardization are two crucial points of current crane control architecture. There is no standardized uniform control input interface or flex ible and common control architecture to deal with all possible cranes with different kinematics even if the cranes are from the same industrial maritime company. As a result, experienced human operators are only good at controlling some types of cranes ev en after many years of training. If operators have to control other crane systems, more professional training is absolutely necessary in order to get familiar with using the new input device with the different control strategy. Rolls-Royce Marine has a la rge number of different types of cranes and robotic systems for handling cargoes and operations. The proposed project will address to develop a flexible control architecture and a common haptic device for all different Rolls-Royce marine deck cranes/robot s offering working efficiency and manipulation safety in marine operations. The project will therefore be a unique and it will strengthen the maritime cluster in the region and nationally. This project will combine expertise from complementary discipline s: robotics, artificial intelligence, computer science, and maritime industry. The research will pave the way towards new real maritime application fields, particularly towards the crane handling and manipulation. This project is expected to contribute to improving the competitiveness of Norwegian scientific research not only in robotic crane manipulation but also in maritime application.