JPH07206378A - Position measuring device for bucket - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To improve measurement precision by a method wherein a bucket position measuring device is caused to effect tracking of movement of a bucket as a distance to the bucket is measured by a photo pulse range finder, the change of the angle in a vertical and a horizontal direction of the photo pulse range finder occasioned by the tracking operation is detected, and the three-dimensional coordinate position of the bucket is decided. CONSTITUTION:A position measuring device 22 to measure the position of a bucket 6 moved along a cable crane is installed in a home position. The bucket position measuring device is provided with a photo pulse range finder 32 comprising a pulse laser emitting part to irradiate a recurrence reflecting body 20, mounted on a bucket 6, with pulse beams; a light receiving part for measuring a distance to receive reflection light from the reflecting body 20; and a light receiving part for tracking. The range finder 32 is displaced in a vertical direction and a horizontal direction so as to correct the light receiving surface of the light receiving part 48 to a central position by means of a deviation value between a horizontal axis and a vertical axis based on an output from the light receiving part for tracking. In this case, the present coordinate position of the bucket 6 is computed by a computer 26 based on the angle in a horizontal and a vertical direction of the photo pulse range finder 32 and the measurement of the range finder 32.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a bucket position measuring device, and more particularly to a bucket crane for measuring the position of a bucket that changes from moment to moment in a cable crane for supplying concrete to, for example, a dam construction site. Position measuring device.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art As is well known, a cable crane is used as one of means for transporting concrete from a manufacturing site to a setting site at a dam construction site.

This cable crane is, for example, as shown in FIG. 4, a main rope 2 stretched above a planned construction site of a dam 1 constructed in a mountain, and is suspended from the main rope 2 along the main rope 2. Travelable trolley 3 and trolley towing 4
And a concrete bucket 6 hung from the bottom of the trolley 3 via suspension lines 5, and a transport start position A at which the trolley 3 is installed on the mountain side by pulling the trolley 3 and the center bottom of the dam 1. The traverse winch 7 that reciprocates between the transportation end positions B, the longitudinal winch 8 that winds up and down the suspension rope 5 to elevate the bucket 6, and the position of the trolley 3 and the position of the bucket 6 are monitored. In addition, an operation room 9 for driving and controlling the winches 7 and 8 is provided.

In order to transport and set concrete using the bucket 6, for example, a transfer for transporting concrete made by a batcher plant (not shown) in a direction orthogonal to the paper surface is provided at the upper side of the transport start position A. A concrete hopper 11 is arranged at the transport end position B while the car 10 is traveling. Based on a control operation from the operation room 9, the trolley 3 is moved laterally and the bucket 6 is moved.
Is moved up and down, the bucket 6 is positioned and stopped at each of the positions A and B, and concrete is supplied and discharged. As a method for operating the movement or stop of the bucket 6, conventionally, for example, a supervisor placed at each position A and B and an operator placed in the operation room 9 wirelessly communicate with each other to instruct the supervisor. Based on the above, a running operation and a steady rest operation were performed by an operator's manual operation, and a work for stopping the fine adjustment was performed.

[0005]

However, with this method, there is a large time delay from information transmission to actual correction and fine adjustment operation, and the control direction and control amount tend to be ambiguous. The work was not always completed inside, and was dependent on the skill of the worker. Further, since it is dangerous that the bucket is swung over the worker's head, the waiting time and the evacuation time of the worker are long, so that the work efficiency is poor and it becomes a problem in profitability, and automation is desired.

In automation, each winch 7,
It is conceivable that an encoder is provided on the position 8, the rotation speed of the winch is converted to the wire feed amount, the position of the bucket is estimated, and feedback control or the like is performed based on that position. However, there are many unmeasurable elements such as the bending of the main rope along the traveling direction, and the measurement results are not accurate.

The present invention is intended to solve the above problems, and an object thereof is to obtain accurate control information by accurately measuring the position of a bucket that changes from moment to moment in real time. The present invention provides a bucket position measuring device.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above object, a bucket position measuring device according to the present invention is installed at a fixed position and irradiates a retroreflector provided on the bucket with pulsed light. An optical pulse distance meter comprising a light source and a light receiving section for receiving the reflected light from the reflector, and a light receiving surface of the light receiving section as a central position for receiving a horizontal axis deviation value signal and a vertical axis deviation value signal of the light receiving section. Driving means for tilting the optical pulse distance meter in the vertical direction and turning it in the horizontal direction to correct it, detecting means for respectively detecting the horizontal and vertical angles of the optical pulse distance meter, and the respective detecting means. And a calculation unit that calculates the current coordinate position of the bucket based on the angle measurement value and the measurement value of the optical pulse distance meter.

[0009]

According to the above construction, the optical pulse range finder automatically tracks in accordance with the movement of the bucket while measuring the distance to the bucket. With the tracking operation, the vertical and horizontal angle changes of the optical pulse rangefinder are detected by the detection means,
The three-dimensional coordinate position of the bucket is determined in real time from the detected angle and distance.

[0010]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the drawings. In the embodiments, the entire cable crane system is the same as that shown in FIG. 4, and therefore the description thereof is omitted. The same or corresponding parts are referred to by the same reference numerals, and only the main parts of the present invention are given new reference numerals. explain.

FIG. 1 shows a system configuration of the position measuring device according to the present invention, which is installed at a fixed point position, for example, a position close to the operation room 9 and having the entire view of the transfer start position A and the transfer end position B as a visual field. The pulse light is emitted toward the retroreflector 20 provided in the bucket 6, and the reflected light from the reflector 20 is received, whereby the bucket 6
A device main body 22 equipped with an optical pulse distance meter and an automatic tracking mechanism for measuring a distance to the device, a remote control connected to the device main body 22 via a controller 24 in the operation room 9, and coordinate calculation. And a computer 26 which constitutes a system for.

As shown in FIG. 2, the apparatus main body 22 has a fixed base 28 installed at the fixed position, a concave support arm 30 pivotably mounted on the fixed base 28, and a tilting inside the support arm 30. An optical pulse range finder 32 is provided that is pos- sibly supported.

The support arm 30 is horizontally swiveled with respect to the fixed base 28 via a horizontal drive unit 34 composed of a swiveling servomotor or the like, and the swivel angle is an encoder 36 provided on a swivel shaft at the center of the support arm 30. It is measured by.

The optical pulse distance meter 32 is tiltably supported by the support arm 30 via a vertical drive unit 38 composed of a servo motor, and the tilt angle is on the side of the support arm 30. It is measured by the encoder 40 provided on the support shaft 32. The optical pulse distance meter 32 has a pulse laser emitting section 42 at the lower center of the front surface of the case.
CCD camera 44 on the upper part, light receiving part 46 for distance measurement on the left and right
And a light receiving section 48 for automatic tracking is arranged.

The pulsed light from the laser emitting section 44 is reflected by the retroreflector 20 provided in the bucket. This reflection amount has a reflection intensity 1000 times or more higher than that of the other diffuse reflection surface, and when the light is received by the light receiving portions 46 and 48 through the lens, it is received as a bright spot.

In the distance measuring light receiving section 46, the light emitting section 42 is used.
The distance corresponding to the time difference between the received reflected pulse and the emitted pulse emitted from is measured, and this measured value is input to the computer 26. The measurement accuracy is higher than that of the conventional one, and is not affected by fluctuation factors such as bending and slip of the main rope.

As shown in FIG. 3, the automatic tracking light receiving section 48 has a light receiving surface 50b composed of a large number of photodiodes capable of two-dimensional position detection on the focal plane of the lens 50a, and its x-axis and y-axis. A horizontal axis (x axis) deviation value signal and a vertical axis (y axis) deviation value signal are output according to the difference between the center of the light receiving surface where the axes intersect and the detection position.

The horizontal and vertical driving units 34 and 38 are driven in the x and y directions so that the deviation value signals thereof coincide with 0, that is, in order to coincide with the bright spot as the center, whereby the optical pulse distance meter 32 is constantly operated. This is tracked according to the movement of the reflector 3. The trackable field of view depends on the diameter of the reflector 20 and the amount of reflected light, but can be tracked with high accuracy.

By driving these, each encoder 3
6 and 40 detect the horizontal angle and the vertical angle, and these values are input to the computer 26.

The computer 26 comprises an arithmetic and control unit 26a, a keyboard 26b, a joystick 26c for manual operation, a display 26d and the like (see FIG. 1), and the display 26d displays the scenery captured by the CCD camera 44. To do.

The arithmetic and control unit 26a controls in accordance with the contents of the program contained in the floppy disk, and operates the horizontal and vertical drive units 34 and 38 in response to the manual input of the joystick 26c. 22 is swung and tilted in the horizontal and vertical directions, the x and y axes are projected as an image, and the image is superimposed on the landscape displayed on the display 26d, and the difference between the bright spot and the landscape detected by the reflector 20 is calculated. Display it.

Further, the apparatus main body 22 is activated by a starting operation.
Is set to the automatic tracking operation mode, and the distance information obtained by the distance detecting light receiving unit 46 and each encoder 3 are set.
Three-dimensional coordinates are calculated based on the angle information from 6, 40. The calculation formula is based on a general formula. When the distance to the target object is L, the vertical direction projection angle is θg, and the horizontal direction projection angle is θs, the respective coordinates x, y, z are as follows. Required by.

X = LCosθg · Cosθs y = LCosθg · Sinθs z = LSinθg The above calculation results are sequentially displayed on the display 26d and are output as control data together with time data to an operation control unit (not shown). It is used as real-time data for automatic control.

Next, a method of operating the above position measuring device will be described. First, the power is turned on, the device is activated, and after self-diagnosis, the field of view currently being measured is displayed on the display 26d. From this state, the joystick 26c is used to manually control the target object, that is, the reflector 20, into the visual field in which automatic tracking is possible.

After confirming the target object, if the key board 26a is input and the start of tracking is instructed, automatic tracking is started.
After that, continuous measurement of three-dimensional coordinates will be performed.

By previously programming the reference position of the bucket 6, that is, the initial position for starting the work, the subsequent alignment becomes unnecessary.

For example, when the reference position is the state where the bucket 6 is seated at the transport start position A, the coordinates x,
By setting y, z = 0, 0, 0, the tracking operation is repeated by using this position as the origin coordinate.

[0028]

As described above in detail with reference to the embodiments, in the bucket position measuring device according to the present invention,
The optical pulse rangefinder automatically measures the distance to the bucket according to the movement of the bucket, and the vertical and horizontal angle changes of the optical pulse rangefinder are detected with the tracking operation. Since the three-dimensional coordinate position of the bucket is determined from the distance and the distance, the measurement accuracy of the optical pulse rangefinder does not depend on the measurement values due to fluctuation factors such as the slip of the winch and wire and the bending of the main rope as in the past. It is possible to obtain high measurement accuracy according to. Therefore, the present invention is suitable as a means for obtaining real-time data for automatic operation control of a concrete bucket.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is an explanatory diagram showing a system configuration of a bucket position measuring device according to the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a perspective view showing a main body of the position measuring apparatus.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram showing a tracking mechanism in the same device.

FIG. 4 is a schematic view showing the entire cable crane.

[Explanation of symbols]

2 Main rope 3 Traverse trolley 5 Suspension rope 6 Bucket A Transport start position B Transport end position 20 Retroreflector 22 Device body 26 Computer (calculator) 32 Optical pulse range finder 34, 38 Horizontal, vertical drive unit 36, 40 Encoder (Vertical / horizontal angle detection / detection means) 42 optical pulse light emitting section 46 light receiving section for distance measurement 48 light receiving section

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A bucket hung from a traverse trolley which is capable of traveling along a main rope stretched between two points via a hanging rope, and the trolley is provided between a conveyance start position and a conveyance end position. A position measuring device used for a cable crane that reciprocates, winds and lowers the hanging rope, and raises and lowers the bucket, the measuring device being installed at a fixed point position and provided on the bucket. Optical pulse distance meter consisting of a light source for radiating pulsed light toward the retroreflector and a light receiving section for receiving reflected light from the reflector, and a horizontal axis deviation value signal and a vertical axis deviation value of the light receiving section A drive means for tilting the optical pulse distance meter in a vertical direction to turn the optical pulse distance meter in the horizontal direction so as to correct the light receiving surface of the light receiving unit to a central position in response to a signal, and a horizontal and vertical direction of the optical pulse distance meter. Each angle A bucket position measuring device comprising: detecting means for detecting; and calculating means for calculating a current coordinate position of the bucket based on an angle measurement value of each detecting means and a measurement value of the optical pulse distance meter. .