JPS6254751B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an automatic operation device for a crane for transporting garbage in an incineration plant.

Incineration plants require pits to temporarily store collected waste before supplying it to processing equipment. Garbage storage pits range in size from several hundred tons to several thousand tons. The order in which garbage stored in a garbage storage pit is transported to a garbage processing device, such as an incinerator input hopper, is a critical issue when automatically operating a crane.

A bucket crane is usually used to transport the waste from the storage pit to a processing device, such as an incinerator. Conventionally, cranes have been operated remotely and manually by an operator in a crane operating room.

The crane operating room is located above the waste storage pit and is separated from the pit by a glass window.
Crane operating rooms often impose excessive mental fatigue on operators because they are located at extremely high places and in narrow spaces. In fact, when a plant is operated continuously 24 hours a day, one person is required to continue operating it late at night. Feelings of loneliness and anxiety at this time are especially serious.

Recently, to solve these problems,
Attempts are being made to make cranes autonomous.

If crane operation were to be automated, it would be as follows.

When the garbage level in the incinerator's input hopper drops to the lower limit, the level switch issues a garbage input request signal. This signal becomes the activation signal for the automatic crane operation circuit, and the crane starts operating.

The crane travels vertically and horizontally to a certain grabbing position in the storage pit, stops, and lowers the bucket to perform a garbage grabbing operation. When the grasping operation is completed, the bucket is hoisted up, moved to the input hopper that issued the input request signal, and the garbage is input.

In this way, the crane operation is performed by performing a series of operations such as moving the crane to the grasping position, grasping the garbage, moving the crane to the hopper position, and loading the garbage, depending on the request signal from the loading hopper. must not.

The most important of these operations is the method of determining the dust catching position within the pit. This is because the garbage in the pit has different heights, and it is desirable to grab the garbage from a higher place.

Several methods have already been tried regarding the selection of the dirt catching position.

One method is to divide the storage pit into a horizontal (X) and vertical (Y) matrix in advance, and perform a gripping operation on each block in a preset order. It's a method.

FIG. 3 illustrates such a matrix-like block division. This method does not require a means for detecting the height of the dust, since it merely grabs the dust evenly. However, this method is only effective when the dirt in the pit is even. However, the inside of Pit 3 is often not flat.

As shown in FIG. 1, the garbage is brought to the incineration plant by a garbage transport vehicle 4 and thrown into the garbage pit 3. Therefore, the area near the input port becomes a higher mountain than other parts. There will be a low depression near the opposite wall. Other parts also have uneven heights and are not of uniform height. As you can see, there are many uneven surfaces inside the garbage storage pit, but it is best to dump the bucket on a mountain. When a bucket is lowered onto a slope, one side of the lower end of the bucket comes into contact with the garbage first and is lifted up, which may cause the bucket to tip over. Even if this is not the case, if the bucket is tilted, it will not be able to properly grab garbage, and it may also cause an accident where the rope breaks.

Therefore, it would be better to divide the pit into an X and Y matrix and pick up the debris in turn.
Unable to make good grasping movements.

Another method is to detect the accumulation state of garbage by the length of the wire rope hanging from the bucket, to know the peaks and valleys, and to grasp the garbage starting from the peaks. .

At first, the robot performs a grasping motion for each of X and Y blocks in a predetermined order, and moves around the pit.
Since the lowering length of the wire rope corresponds to the length from the crane to the garbage surface, the garbage height of each block can be detected. This information is stored in a storage device and the dust accumulation distribution within the pit is recognized. From the next grasping operation, the grasping position is determined in order from the convex part (mountain) of the pile distribution and the paper is turned over.

This method is convenient because it is carried out with knowledge of the distribution of deposition heights. However, there are some unsatisfactory points.

First, in order to recognize the deposition distribution over the entire surface inside the pit, it is necessary to perform at least one grasping motion on every block.
Must be executed once. Since the grasping operation is not repeated in a short period of time, it takes a long time to recognize the deposition distribution. During this period, the garbage accumulation distribution must not change.

However, garbage is normally brought into pits at all times during the day. Even if a grasping operation is performed and the accumulation distribution is recognized, if there is a subsequent operation of throwing the garbage into the garbage pit, the accumulation distribution will change. It is only useful when no new garbage is brought in.

The present invention aims to overcome the above-mentioned drawbacks and ensure automatic crane operation.

Therefore, the present invention uses an optical distance measuring device to directly measure the height of garbage above the garbage storage pit.
Made it aware of heights and lows.

In other words, one or more optical distance measuring devices are installed above the pit, and the distance between this device and the trash is optically measured, the height of the trash layer at each position is known, and the height of the trash layer is always determined at the highest point. The idea was to grab the trash from there.

Since the garbage is grabbed from the highest part of the mountain, the bucket will not fall over during the grabbing operation.
In addition, the distribution of garbage accumulation in the pit changes to become more even, and stable automatic operation of the crane becomes possible.

The present invention can also be used for other tasks.

The crane inside the garbage storage pit transports the garbage to the incinerator's input hopper, as well as reloading and stirring the garbage. In other words, in order to even out uneven garbage distribution, garbage from high places is transferred to lower places or mixed.

According to the present invention, the accumulation status of garbage can be determined, so that transshipment and stirring operations, which were conventionally performed manually, can be automated.

The optical distance measuring device used in the present invention uses an optical distance detector applied to a known automatic focus camera.

The mechanism and operation of the distance detector are described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 1973-
83524, JP-A No. 52-11954, JP-A No. 50-39543, etc., and is well known, so it will be briefly explained.

The distance detector includes a distance measurement module, a fixed mirror that provides a beam of light from two directions, a movable mirror,
It consists of a movable mirror drive mechanism, a movable mirror rotation angle transmitter, etc.

The ranging module consists of two sets of silicon photodetector arrays and two silicon photodetector arrays that converge a beam of light onto the photodetector arrays.
It includes a set of equivalent lenses and a prism for inputting the reflected light from the fixed and movable mirrors to each lens.

An LSI in which a differential amplifier that calculates the difference in the output of each corresponding point of a photodetector array, an adder that totals these differences, a peak detector that detects the minimum value, etc. are formed on a single monolithic substrate. is housed within the ranging module.

The fixed mirror and the movable mirror are separated by the base line length B, and the two beams reflected by both are:
Images are focused on respective corresponding photodetector arrays. If the two images are at corresponding positions on the light-receiving element array, the sum of output differences at corresponding points on the light-receiving elements becomes minimum. When the peak detector detects the minimum value, there should be an object on the extension of the light beam between the fixed mirror and the movable mirror.

Therefore, by measuring the rotation angle of the movable mirror, the distance between the distance detector and the object can be determined. Letting θ be the rotation angle of the movable mirror from the infinite position, the distance L can be found as L=B/tan2θ.

The movable mirror starts from an infinite position, sweeps to a close distance, detects the peak voltage, and calculates its maximum peak (actually, the sum of the absolute values of the individual output differences of the light receiving elements with a negative sign attached) Search for ). In the case of an automatic focus camera, when the camera returns to normal, the lens focuses and the shutter opens.

In the present invention, only the distance detection operation is performed, and photographing is not necessary.
You only need to use one of them. Since the time required for one detection is at most 100 msec, the time delay is hardly a problem.

Embodiments will be described below with reference to drawings showing examples.

In FIG. 1, a garbage supply crane 2 is provided above the garbage storage pit 3, and a garbage transport vehicle 4 is feeding garbage into the garbage storage pit 3. The transportation crane 2 picks up the garbage and throws it into the garbage input hopper 1. As shown in Figure 2, the distribution of garbage accumulation is uneven.

As shown in FIG. 4, one or more optical distance measuring devices 7 are installed above the garbage storage pit.
The optical distance measuring device measures the distance to the surface of the stored waste.

The installed optical distance measuring device 7 not only points vertically downward, but also sequentially scans the pit plane two-dimensionally, as shown in FIG. The vertical distance to the dust surface can be calculated from the distance to the scanning line 9 and the angle of deviation of the optical distance measuring device 7 from the vertical line.

Although one optical distance measuring device can cover a certain area, it cannot accurately measure the height of a far position in the diagonal direction. In this case, two or more optical distance measuring devices 7 must be installed.

In this way, when each optical distance measuring device makes one round along the scanning line 9, the dirt accumulation distribution within the dirt storage pit 3 becomes clear. Therefore, this is stored in the distribution storage circuit. At the same time, the distribution may be displayed on the television screen. It is also possible to display contour lines as shown in Figure 6.

The optical distance measuring device will be explained in more detail with reference to FIG.

The distance detector 20, which is formed by a combination of the fixed and movable mirrors described above, measures the distance to the dust surface. The scanning drive device 21 of the distance detector causes the distance detector to scan the dirt plane by turning its head vertically and horizontally. A control circuit 22 of the drive device directs the trajectory of the scanning line.

Since the distance measuring operation of the distance detector 20 has been completed, the synchronizer 23 instructs the control circuit 22 to advance the scanning position to the next point. At the same time, information on the angular deviation of the scanning position is sent to the dust accumulation height calculation device 24.
tell to. The calculation device 24 calculates the distance L and the detector 2.
The height of dirt accumulation is calculated from the angle Θ of the deviation from the zero vertical line.

The results are successively input to and stored in the dust accumulation height distribution storage device 25. The stored information is
After passing through the distribution discrimination device 26, the signal is divided into a display device and a crane control device by a signal distributor 27.

The display control device 28 displays the height of the dirt on a display 29 such as a television screen using contour lines or color coding. The display is for monitoring.

On the other hand, the crane automatic operation circuit 30 moves to the maximum peak of garbage determined by the distribution discrimination circuit 26.
Move the crane. When the crane stops on top of the largest garbage pile, it automatically lowers its bucket, grabs the garbage, closes the bucket, and lifts it up. Thereafter, the crane is started and moved to the input hopper 1 of the processing equipment such as the incinerator, where it dumps the waste.

The vertical and horizontal position of the crane is detected using a synchronized detector or a proximity switch.

The operation will be explained in the above configuration.

As the garbage in the input hopper falls, the level switch for transmitting the lower limit of the level of the input hopper is activated. This gives a start command to the automatic crane operation circuit.

The crane automatically moves to the maximum height garbage grasping position in accordance with the signal from the garbage accumulation distribution determining device 26. The longitudinal, transverse, and bucket hanging motions may be performed sequentially or as a compound motion.

During the hanging operation of lowering the bucket, the hanging speed is reduced by a signal from the distribution discriminator 26 just before the bucket hits the floor. Then, the suspension operation is stopped by the landing signal. This is because if the robot reaches the ground at the same speed, the rope may become too loose, but if the robot slows down midway, the rope will not loosen, making it easier to control the motor.

After landing on the ground, Bucket makes a garbage-grabbing motion. Subsequently, it performs a winding operation and automatically moves to the position of the loading hopper that issued the loading command. Here, the crane loads the garbage into the hopper, then moves to a predetermined standby position and waits.

The above is the work of transporting waste from the pit to the hopper.

Next, by the crane automatic operation device of the present invention,
A case in which garbage transshipment work is automatically operated will be explained.

As mentioned above, when garbage is thrown into the pit from a delivery vehicle, it tends to accumulate on one side. This will need to be removed using a crane to make it lower, and excessively low points will need to be made higher by adding trash.

Since the distribution discriminator 26 detects point A where the garbage layer is high and point B where the garbage layer is low, the crane automatic operation circuit moves the crane to point A, performs a garbage grabbing operation, moves to point B, and so on. Give orders to remove trash. In this way, the transshipment work is automatically performed by the crane.

It is also possible to display the output of the garbage accumulation distribution storage device in the form of contour lines on the CRT of the graphic display device, and use a light pen to instruct the user to transport the garbage from point A to point B.

Now, in the case of an incineration plant, one of the essential tasks is stirring and mixing the waste to ensure uniformity of the waste.

Stirring and mixing of waste is often carried out according to a predetermined program. According to the present invention, since the dust accumulation distribution is known, this distribution signal can be used as a correction signal. By preferentially stirring and mixing areas with a high distribution density, the deposition state of the entire pit can be quickly averaged.

In this way, the present invention automates crane operations such as loading work, transshipment work, and stirring work. However, these tasks are not placed in the same order, and input tasks take priority. Transshipment work and stirring work are carried out only when loading work is not necessary. Even during transshipment work, if a request signal is sent from the input hopper, the transshipment operation is stopped and the garbage input operation is immediately started.

The dust accumulation height calculation device 24, accumulation height distribution storage device 25, distribution discrimination device 26, automatic operation circuit 30, display control device 28, etc. described above are configured by a combination of a microcomputer, a minicomputer, a sequencer, etc. I can do that.

According to the present invention, it is possible to avoid lonely work in a crane operating room located high above the garbage pit and partitioned into a narrow space. In addition to the work of putting garbage from the garbage pit into the input hopper, we also carry out all tasks, including the work of reloading the garbage in the pit from a high place to a low place, and the work of stirring and mixing garbage, giving priority to places with a high garbage distribution density. In addition, all crane operations are fully automated, including loading garbage from the garbage pit into the input hopper, reloading garbage in the pit, and stirring garbage in the pit when the garbage loading operation is not required. Even if the crane operates continuously for 24 hours, there is no need to always have an operator in the crane operating room. The physical and mental burden on the operator can be greatly reduced.

This is an extremely useful invention.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

Figure 1 is a cross-sectional view of the vicinity of the garbage storage pit at the incineration plant. Figure 2 is a sectional view of Figure 1. Figure 3 is a plan view of the vicinity of the garbage storage pit. FIG. 4 is a sectional view of a garbage storage pit equipped with an optical distance measuring device. FIG. 5 is a plan view showing an example of scanning lines on a pit plane.
Figure 6 is a contour map of the pit plane. FIG. 7 is a system diagram of the apparatus of the present invention. 1... Garbage input hopper, 2... Garbage supply crane, 3... Garbage storage pit, 4... Garbage delivery vehicle, 7... Optical distance measuring device, 9... Scanning line,
20... Distance detector, 21... Scanning drive device for the distance detector, 22... Control circuit for the drive device, 23...
...Synchronization device, 24...Garbage accumulation height calculation device,
25...Distribution storage device for garbage accumulation height, 26...
Distribution discrimination device, 27...Signal distributor, 28...Display control device, 29...Display device, 30...Crane automatic operation circuit.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 Detector 20, scanning drive device 21, and control circuit 2
2 and a synchronizer 23, and is equipped with a garbage supply crane 2 that can move vertically and horizontally.
an optical distance measuring device 7 which is provided above and measures the distance to the dust layer while scanning; an arithmetic device 24 which calculates the height of the dust pile from the distance signal of the optical distance measuring device 7; A distribution storage device 25 that stores the height; a distribution discrimination device 26 that determines the height of the garbage layer in the pit; and a request signal from the input hopper to move the crane 2 to a high point of the garbage layer and perform a garbage grabbing operation. The garbage is transferred to the input hopper 1, and when the operation of inputting garbage to the hopper 1 is stopped, the garbage in the pit is transferred from a high place to a low place based on a signal from the distribution discriminator 26. , a crane automatic operation circuit 3 that performs either or both of stirring and mixing garbage with priority given to places with a high garbage distribution density.
An automatic operation device for a garbage supply crane in an incineration plant consisting of 0 and 0.