A Dual-Arm Robot That Manipulates Heavy Plates With the Support of a Vacuum Lifter

A vacuum lifter is widely used to hold and pick up large, heavy, and flat objects. Conventionally, when using a vacuum lifter, a human worker watches the state of a running vacuum lifter and adjusts the object’s pose to maintain balance. In this work, we propose using a dual-arm robot to replace the human workers and develop planning and control methods for a dual-arm robot to raise a heavy plate with the help of a vacuum lifter. The methods help the robot determine its actions by considering the vacuum lifer’s suction position and suction force limits. The essence of the methods is two-fold. First, we build a Manipulation State Graph (MSG) to store the weighted logical relations of various plate contact states and robot/vacuum lifter configurations, and search the graph to plan efficient and low-cost robot manipulation sequences. Second, we develop a velocity-based impedance controller to coordinate the robot and the vacuum lifter when lifting an object. With its help, a robot can follow the vacuum lifter’s motion and realize compliant robot-vacuum lifter collaboration. Real-world experiments are carried out to investigate the proposed planning and control methods. The results show that a robot can effectively and flexibly work together with a vacuum lifter to manipulate large and heavy plate-like objects with the methods’ support. Note to Practitioners—This paper is motivated by the vacuum lifters used for transporting heavy plates in a factory that produces building materials. In the factory, a human worker attaches the suction cup of a vacuum lifter to a plate and controls the vacuum lifter to pull the plate up. Meanwhile, another human worker moves and lifts the plate to a goal pose, following the vacuum lifter while maintaining balance. The job is dangerous as the plate is heavy, and the vacuum lifter is not always strong enough to hold the plate firmly. Inspired by the usage and safety problem, we in this paper develop a planning and control method for a dual-arm robot to replace humans. The robot coordinates its motion to work with the vacuum lifter and performs lifting tasks. The vacuum lifter could remain operated by a human worker or be actuated by signals from the dual-arm robot or other third-party machines. The work is complementary to our previous study that developed planners for robots to use pulley blocks. They together provide extensive knowledge for using low-payload collaboratively robots to manipulate heavy plates.