Heavy material handling by cooperative robot control

When building large-scale structures, the need for automated assembly is increasing in addition to automation of welding and painting, which are already in practical use. For common assembly robots, studies on holding and handling workpieces are being actively conducted; however, few studies have been performed on putting them to practical use for the handling and assembly of large-scale workpieces. We therefore propose a handling system using a dual-arm robot and a hoist as a gravity compensation system as a system suitable for assembly work in the shipbuilding and bridge construction Ž elds, where heavy workpieces are handled. In this article, we describe details of this system and the results of effectiveness veriŽ cation carried out by handling experiments.