A fast path planning method for single and dual crane erections

This research aims to develop a method for planning the erection path automatically and efficiently. The proposed method is comprised of two steps. The first step is to convert the scene of the crane erection into a configuration space, in which the crane's load capacity and the obstacles in the environment have been included. The second step is to find a collision-free path in the configuration space by using the probabilistic road map (PRM) method. Three tests were conducted to validate the action, crane placproposed method in this research. The results show that the proposed method is efficient, and can generate effective erection paths for operating in near real-time scenarios. The method is appropriate for both single and dual crane erection, and can help engineers plan more easily, and verify erection-planning decisions such as crane seleement, and logistcs.

► We developed a near real-time erection path planning method using PRM.
► We validate the method by three tests for both single crane and dual crane.
► This method abandons the use of hoist height as a coordinate of the C-space.
► We developed a cost function to estimate the cost of planned erection path