Low center-of-gravity movement robotic arm with kinematic optimization algorithm for on-site construction

Abstract

<p>Robotic arms have increasingly been applied to onsite building construction (e.g., bricklaying, welding, and 3D printing). However, engineers should make a great effort to customize different mobile platforms (e.g., quadruped, hexaploid, tracked robot) for robotic arms in the complex ground environment of the construction site. The cable-driven platform under the existing crane system has the potential to address this problem. Nevertheless, the robotic arm operation would cause the swing of the cable-driven platform. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a novel structure for the robotic arm, namely the center of gravity control margin (CoG-CM) robotic arm and its control algorithm to reduce the CoG movement in a cable-driven platform. Compared with the conventional robotic arm, the main contribution of the proposed one is that the arm consists of four parallel joints, which could provide the control capability of the system’s CoG. This structure has infinite solutions for a determined target, and conventional control algorithms are unsuitable for this system. So, we formulate its CoG, and the robotic arm CoG pose control (ArmCoG-PC) is proposed to solve the kinematics of the CoG-CM robotic arm. Finally, the experiment on CoG-CM and typical 6-degree-of-freedom robotic arms validate our proposal.<br></p>