Man-Machine Interaction for an Unmanned Tower Crane Using Wireless Multi-Controller

Operator cab is one of the important components of a tower crane, which is used to obtain sufficient quality feedback information from tower crane and ground observers. However, there are two main drawbacks of the tower crane system, low efficiency and labor costs, because the tower crane need to work with the assistance of the ground observers. In particular, the work environment of the cap operators is extremely bad and dangerous. In order to reduce the manual intervention and increase the efficiency of the tower crane, this paper presents a man-machine interaction for an unmanned tower crane using wireless multi-controller. Images of the crane cab are captured by cameras and then are coded and transmitted to wireless controllers and a server terminal through wireless local area network (WLAN). In this stage, the programmable logic controller (PLC) is used as a tower crane controller to collect sensor data. The data is also transmitted to the wireless controllers and the server terminal through WLAN. In addition, control parameters are transmitted to the server terminal and the tower crane controller via wireless controller transmission. After that, the tower crane controllers obtain the control commands and then perform them. Finally, testing results indicate that the unmanned tower crane is effective when it works with the man-machine interaction.