Journal of Forest and Environmental Science

Institute of Forest Science, kangwon National University (강원대학교 산림과학연구소)
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Development of Easy-to-Use Crane-Tip Controller for Forestry Crane

  • Ki-Duck, Kim (Department of Biosystems Engineering, Kangwon National University) ;
  • Beom-Soo, Shin (Department of Biosystems Engineering, Kangwon National University)
  • Received : 2022.10.19
  • Accepted : 2022.11.20
  • Published : 2022.12.31
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Abstract

Forestry crane work in a forest harvester or forwarder is regarded as one of most hard work requiring a very high level of operation skill. The operator must handle two or more multi-axes joysticks simultaneously to control the multiple manipulators for maneuvering the crane-tip to its intended location. This study has been carried out to develop a crane-tip controller which can intuitively maneuver the crane-tip, resulting in improving the productivity by decreasing the technical difficulty of control as well as reducing the workload. The crane-tip controller consists of a single 2-axis joystick and a control algorithm run on microcontroller. Lab-scale forestry crane was constructed using electric cylinders. The crane-tip control algorithm has the crane-tip follow the waypoints generated on the given path considering the dead band region using LBO (Lateral Boundary Offset). A speed control gain to change the speed of relevant cylinders relatively is applied as well. By the P (Proportional) control within the control interval of 20 msec, the average error of crane-tip control on the predefined straight path turned out to be 14.5 mm in all directions. When the joystick is used the waypoints are generated in real time by the direction signal from the joystick. In this case, the average error of path control was 12.4 mm for straight up, straight forward and straight down movements successively at a certain constant speed setting. In the slant movement of crane-tip by controlling two axes of joystick simultaneously, the movement of crane-tip was controlled in the average error of 15.9 mm when the crane-tip is moved up and down while moving toward forward direction. It concluded that the crane-tip control was possible using the control algorithm developed in this study.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by the research grant of Kangwon National University in 2022.

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