Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE/SICE International Symposium on WeA1A.

5
System Integration, Sapporo Convention Center, Sapporo, Japan,
December 13-15, 2016





 

  









 
 

Hanchao Li1, Daisuke Harada1, Naohiko Hanajima2, Hidekazu Kajiwara1,
Kentaro Kurashige1, Yoshinori Fujihira1, and Masato Mizukami1


AbstractThere exist vertical long ropes that need periodical
inspection for infrastructure maintenance. Development of
lifting devices along with the ropes is demanded for steady
observation at human-unreachable positions. The lifting device
based on alternating rotation hoist has been proposed for
carrying inspection devices to the target level. This research
realizes an automatic movement of the lifting device by
computer control for the improvement of speed and accuracy.
Furthermore, a new frame which is equipped with the
inspection device is developed for saving weight and keeping
balance. Through experiments, performances of the new frame
and control system are evaluated from the aspects of speed,
accuracy, weight and balance. The results show that the newly
developed frame has advantages in weight and speed. The
inclination of frame and ascender is measured. The error values
are calculated to analyze the accuracy. And the developed
control system can control frame effectively.
I. INTRODUCTION
Currently, bridges and some large buildings have been
corroded by exposure of wind and rain for a long time. They
debase the safety of infrastructures. Some visual inspections
are required to be carried out periodically by law. The cost of
manpower, material resource and time for the inspection tends
to be massive. Therefore, development of robotic devices to
support the infrastructure inspection is expected [1-3]: for
example, pipe inspecting robots [4,5], wire hanging robots
[6,7], Hammer sounding [8], Underwater robot [9], and aerial
vehicle [10].
In this study, we focus on the inspection of vertically long
ropes at higher place outdoors, where human is hard to reach.
We have proposed a lifting device with an alternating rotation
hoist [11,12]. It carries an inspection device installed on a
frame body to the target height. There are numerous
developments to realize climbing robots for the inspection
[13]: wall climbing [14,15], inside or outside of vertical pipe
[16,17], bridges [18,19], guide rail systems [20,21], and wind
power blades [22-24]. For the wall climbing, vacuum fixtures
were applied to support the equipment on a vertical plane
surface. However, in our application, there is no plane surface
around the ropes. For the vertical pipe climbing, the magnetic
wheels were used to keep its body weight at the vertical pipe.
The rope which we deal with is too thin to attach the magnetic
wheels. For the bridge cable climbing, the self-locking wheels
were used. The cable is not vertical but sloped. Then, there is a
considerable risk to fall down in the case of vertical rope. For
the guide rail systems, construction of the rails is mandatory. It
1
Hanchao Li is with the Muroran Institute of Technology, Muroran,
Hokkaido 050-8585 Japan
2
Naohiko Hanajima is a corresponding author with the Muroran Institute
of Technology, hana@mondo.mech.muroran-it.ac.jp
978-1-5090-3329-4/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
is not applicable for our case. For wind power blades, the
inspection robot was lifted up and down by the ordinary hoist.
When the ordinary hoist winds the lifting cable, its cylindrical
radius of the drum is increased by the length of rotating
amount. Therefore, more power is required for winding a long
cable. However, the alternating rotation hoist which we have
proposed winds less length, it requires smaller power.
Furthermore, a locking motion function keeps the equipment
to lift at the cable when the hoist loosens the cable. This serves
a fail-safe function to the device.
The prototype of the proposed lifting device has been
developed and tested [11,12]. It was found that there is room
for improvement. In addition, some functions have not been
implemented yet. First, we redesign the frame body carrying
the inspection device. The conventional type of the frame
body was too heavy to lift up and its weight balance was not
even. We develop a light-weight and even-balance frame body.
Second, we implement an automatic control program for hoist
rotation. The proposed lifting device needs to rotate the hoist
alternatively. In the conventional program, a human operator
needed to change the rotational direction of the hoist by
manual. It is expected that the new automatic control program
will improve lifting speed and accuracy of the frame body.
To investigate the efficiency of the improvement, we
perform some experiments. The weight of the frame body is
compared between the conventional and the newly developed.
To evaluate the balance and accuracy, the inclination angles
and lifting height is measured under different rotation speeds.
This paper is organized as follows: In Section II, we
review the lifting device which we have been proposed. In
Section III, the newly developed frame body is presented. In
Section IV, the automatic control program is explained. In
Section V, the experiments and the results are shown and
discussed. Finally, in Section VI, some brief concluding
remarks are made.
II. LIFTING DEVICE WITH ALTERNATING ROTATION HOIST
In this section, we briefly review the lifting device with
alternating rotation hoist.
Motion of the lifting device consists of five phases: CW
ascending phase (A1), CCW ascending phase (A2), CW
descending phase (D1), CCW descending phase (D2), and
pause phase (P). Fig.1 shows a schematic diagram of the
lifting device in A1 and A2 phases. The device consists of a
pulley hanged by a support, an ascender pair, a frame body
with a joint, an alternating rotation hoist, and a rope of one
loop. A roller of the alternating rotation hoist is driven by a
computer-controlled motor. The roller reels several turns of
the rope and fastens one end of it. In phase A1, the left side of
the ascender pair locks the rope with friction and the right side
releases it. The roller rotation in the CW direction causes
385
tension in the tightened rope to ascend the ascender pair and
the frame body. In this moment, the rope under the ascender
pair is loosened. After the specified number of rotation of the
roller, phase A2 is served with same number of rotation. In
phase A2, the right side of the ascender pair locks the rope and
the left side releases it. The roller rotation in the CCW
direction causes the lifting motion in the same manner as
phase A1. After A2, phase P is served. In phase P, the roller
stops its rotation and both of the ascender pair is locked. Then,
the frame body stays in stationary state, the inspection device
starts to work. This lifting-up sequence is repeated until the
ascender pair reach to the pulley. The sequence of D1 and D2
lifts down the ascender pair and the frame body. In phase D1
and D2, the right and left sides of the ascender pair are
opposite to phase A1 and A2, respectively.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the lifting device
Ascender pair
Frame
body
Rope
Alternating
rotation hoist
Figure 2. The entire mechanism picture of newly developed frame body
The entire mechanism is shown in Fig.2. For the ascender
pair, we have adopted technology of a climbing device (Petzl,
ZigZag). When the tension is applied on the rope downward,
pawls of the ascender generate frictional force to prevent the
ascender from gliding. This is a locked state. When the tension
is applied upward, there is no friction between the rope and the
ascender. This is a released state. Even if the tension is applied
downward, a release lever of the ascender can loosen the
friction and make it turn to the released state. The release lever
is utilized in phase D1 and D2. The lever can be controlled by
a servo motor.
III. NEWLY DEVELOPED FRAME BODY
The inspection device installed on the frame body is
mainly used to serve visual inspection by using a camera
system. It must move along the target inspected object which
has vertically extremely long shape. The alternating rotation
hoist can produce the force of 17.2 kg-f as a tension to the
rope.
The conventional prototype of the frame body developed
in precedence study is shown in Fig.3 [12]. To make it lighter,
aluminum frames were adopted. To hold the inspected object
inside the frame body, sponge rollers were installed. Its size
was 680 mm in height, 660mm in width, and 910mm in depth.
The ascender pair was mounted on a rear surface. It had
enough strength to carry the inspection device. However, the
total weight became around 15 kg, then it was too heavy to lift
up using the alternating rotation hoist. In addition, because of
deformation of the sponge roller, when the ascender pair
pulled up the mount position side, the frame body could not
keep the horizontal posture and it was inclined. Consequently,
we found that the conventional frame body was not good
enough in the aspects of weight and balance.
Figure 3. Conventional frame body developed in precedence study [12]
386
 Figure 4. Newly develped frame body in this study
Aiming at the light-weight and even-balance, a new frame
body is designed as shown in Fig.4. The number of the
aluminum frame is reduced to lose its weight. To keep the
strength, wire ropes against deformation in the frame are
introduced. There are four positioning rollers to move along
the inspected object. Sponge inside the rollers can prevent the
inspected object from damaging. Joint between the ascender
pair and the frame body become a fulcrum, and counter weight
helps to keep even-balance. Its size including the ascender pair
is 1310 mm in height, 626mm in width, and 1200mm in depth.
The total weight is around 9 kg. Therefore, it is confirmed that
the force produced by the alternating rotation hoist can lift the
newly developed frame body.
IV. AUTOMATIC LIFTING CONTROL SYSTEM
In this section, we explain a development of the automatic
lifting control program. The conventional program had
realized the motion control for phase A1, A2, and P,
individually. It forced a human operator to change the motion
phase on suitable timing manually. The control program
developed in this study gives the automatic lifting function to
the control system. It is expected that it will improve lifting
speed and accuracy of the motion of the frame body.
The control system of lifting device consists of the PC,
motion control card (CONTEC, SMC-4DL-PE), servo control
module (Oriental motor, NX610MA-PS25) and wireless
communication module (mbed, NXP LPC1768). The PC, the
motion control card and the servo motor module are applied in
Figure 5. The user interface of control system
B. The motor setting
This part mainly sets the motor motion parameter. These
parameters include I/O logic signal, input and output of the
control signal, input type of encoder, pulse type, signal filter
type, alarm clear, and so on. The motor can meet the
requirements of movement after setting these parameters.
C. The state displaying of movement
This part obtains the current states of motor and display in
the static box of the user interface. According to the displayed
state value, operators can confirm the current state of motor.
D. The input of the movement parameter
By inputting the parameters in the edit box, the distance,
acceleration, deceleration, acceleration time, deceleration time,
initial velocity, final velocity and revolution times can be set
up.
E. The motion control
There are three kinds of motion modes in this motion
control part: alternating rotation motion, JOG motion, and P2P
motion. The first motion mode is the principal mode applied
for the lifting device, and the others are additional. In the
alternating rotation motion, the motor automatically repeats
the CW and CCW rotation according to the cycle times which
operators specified. That is, the lifting device repeats phase A1
and A2 by several times. In the JOG motion, the motor
controlling the alternating rotation hoist. The motion control
card sends a pulse train as a position command for the servo
control module. For software development of the motion
control card, C++ API and libraries are provided from the
vender. The wireless module is for movement of the release
lever of the ascender. We employ Qt Widget of C++ to make
user interface and wireless communication of the control
system as shown in Fig.5. The software is divided into six
parts and each part is explained as follows.
A. The Initialization of the motor
The initialization part matches ID number to axis number
of the motor. After receiving response from the target motor,
   (1)
the servo controller turned on it.




$
order as manual positioning.
In the P2P motion, the motor rotates by pre-specified angular
displacement represented by the pulse train.
Displacement of the rope winded around the hoist is
related to the pulse command. The number of pulses for one
revolution of motor is 1000. Transmission ratio of motor and
hoist roller is about 45.8716. Diameter of the roller of the
alternating rotation hoist is 140mm. According to the
parameters mentioned above, the followed formula (1)
explains transformation between motor pulse P and hoist
rotation distance L[mm].
    
Note that one revolution of the motor implies the rope
displacement of 9.6mm.
387
F. The control of the release lever of the ascenders
This part controls the release lever of the ascender to
cooperate with alternating rotation of the motor. As mentioned
above, to lift down the ascender pair and the frame body in
phase D1 and D2, one of the ascenders is forced to release the
rope using the release lever. The lever is manipulated by a
motor controlled with the mbed module. The wireless
communication between the mbed module and the PC is
connected with XBee modules via the serial communication.
We defined and implemented original control commands for
the releasing motor.
V. EXPERIMENT
For evaluating the performance of the lifting device, the
speed, accuracy, weight and balance should be tested.
According to the developed control system and hardware, the
lifting device with the newly developed fame body is
experimented to ascend to verify the performance.
A. Motion of the lifting device
Timing chart of motion control of this experiment is
shown in Fig.6. One cycle of motion consists of a sequence of
phase A1, P, A2, and P. At the beginning of phase A1, CW
command is sent to the motion control card. After that, to wait
for completion of the CW motor rotation, PC program pauses
for a certain sleep time, Ts. Similarly, this procedure takes
place in CCW rotation. This cycle is repeated four times for
one measurement.
For each CW or CCW rotation, the motor rotates by a fixed
angle, 17,000pulses. It causes a total displacement of
163.2mm in the sense of rope length around the hoist roller.
For duration of 200ms at the beginning, the control program
sends acceleration command from the start speed of 4.8mm/s
to a target speed in the sense of the rope length. For duration of
200ms at the end, it sends deceleration command from a target
speed to 0mm/s. Duration with the target speed depends on the
value of the target speed.
We prepared five conditions on the target speed and sleep
time as shown in Table 1. For each condition, four
measurements were performed.
 ) is one third of the
 ). This difference seems to degrade the
B. Measurement and analysis
In this experiment, we measured the total lifting heights
and the posture inclination for each condition.
The total lifting height was obtained by taking difference
between heights at the beginning and the end of the motion
with respect to the frame body. The height was measured
using a scale manually. Average and standard deviation of the
total lifting height was obtained for each condition. They are
compared with the theoretical lifting height which is
calculated in the sense of rope displacement around the hoist
roller.
The posture inclination was obtained by using two 9-axis
IMU sensors. The sensors mounted on the ascender pair and
the frame body, respectively. The orientation of the sensors
aligned to the coordinate system as Fig.4. The rotation angle
around x axis and y axis were represented as  and ,
respectively. From the graph of each measurement, maximum
and minimum inclination angles were obtained and compared.
C. Results
Fig.7 shows bar graphs of the average total lifting heights
for each the condition. Error bar represents their standard
deviation. Theoretical lifting height is also drawn. Fig.8 and
Fig.9 show line graphs of inclinations in angle  and 
he
horizontal axis indicates the time, the red and blue lines
describe changing trend of angle  and , respectively. Each
figure includes the graphs in condition 1 and 5 for comparison
sake. Fig.10 shows bar graphs representing maximum
inclination angles for each condition.
D. Discussion
To follow the aims of the experiment, we discuss about the
speed, accuracy, weight and balance of the lifting device in
this order.
We changed the target speed from 19.2 mm/s to 96 mm/s
in the five conditions. According to Fig.7, the total lifting
heights for all the conditions are almost same values.
Therefore, it is found that the lifting device can work in the
same manner within this range of the target speed. According
to Fig.9, it took 25 seconds for four cycles in the minimum
case. If we can reduce the sleep time in the PC time chart, it is
expected that the duration time decrease.
From Fig.7, the total lifting height (
theoretical height (
accuracy of this device. One reason of the difference is that the
ascender needs some displacement ( ) of the rope to stretch
and shrink for shifts of locking and releasing. During this
motion, the motor rotating but the frame doesn$t move. The
other reason is the tension of the rope. When the rope is strain,
the tension may cause the rope longer than before ( ). And
when rope is release, the tension may keep the rope recovering
Figure 6. Timing chart of motion control in this experiment its length ( ). These errors are inevitable. Therefore, for
calculating the rotation angle of the hoist, the additional length
Table 1. Conditions on the target speed and sleep time ( ) to winding the rope should be took into account. For
example, the length for one cycle can be calculated as:
Condition 1 2 3 4 5


















 
 
       
(2)
Target speed [pulse/s] 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 As explained in Section II, the weight of the newly
Target speed [mm/s] 19.2 38.4 57.6 76.8 96 developed frame body is 40% lighter than the conventional
Sleep time [s] 11 9 7 5 3 one. It achieved the objective of the design and development.

388
 By comparing the performance between the conditions on
Table 1, it is found that condition 5 has a suitable aspect,
because the balance feature of the frame body is not so
different between them and the speed of lifting is faster.
According to the experiment results, the newly developed
frame body could move under different speed settings and the
inclination angle changing of the frame is little, the balance
performance is tested. And the accuracy is mainly influenced
by the rope tension and ascender stretch and shrink.
Ascender Inclination Angle(v=19.2mm/S,Ts=11000mS)
10

8 

Figure 7. The total lifting height of actual and theoretical value 4

Angle(°)
New Frame Inclination Angle(v=19.2mm/S,Ts=11000mS)
3 0

-2

2 -4

-6
1
-8
Angle(°)

-10
0 0 20 40 60 80
Time(s)

-1
Ascender Inclination Angle(v=96mm/S,Ts=3000mS)
10

-2 8 

6
-3
0 20 40 60 80 4
Time(s)
2
Angle(°)

New Frame Inclination Angle(v=96mm/S,Ts=3000mS)

3 0

 -2
2
-4

-6
1
-8
Angle(°)

0 -10
0 10 20 30 40
Time(s)

-1
Figure 9. The % and & angle of ascender pair in different speed
-2
Maximum angle of new frame body and ascender pair
15



-3 


0 10 20 30 40
 



 
Time(s)
 




Figure 8.

%

&









10
From Fig.10, it is observed that the inclination angles of
Angle(°)

the frame body are less than 3 degrees and smaller than those
of the ascender pair. When the hoist winds the rope, tension to
ascend the devices is applied to the ascender pair. Therefore, 5
the inclination angle of the ascender pair varies larger.
However, the joint between the ascender pair and the frame
body does not transmit the moment but the lifting force. Then,
the frame body does not incline so much and the even-balance
is maintained. The inspection device is mounted on the frame 0
19.2 38.4 57.6 76.8 96
body. It contributes the stable inspection by using this lifting Speed(mm/s)

device. Figure 10. The maximum angle of new frame body and ascender pair.

389
 VI. CONCLUSION
This research is mainly based on the structure design of the
lifting device and development of the automatic control
system. The light-weight frame body was newly developed
through the structure designing and materials choosing. The
automatic lifting motion was realized by the development of
the control program. The performance of speed, accuracy,
weight and balance are evaluated by the experiment. First,
using the automatic control system, the total lifting speed
became faster and it worked in the range from 19.2 mm/s to
96 mm/s. Second, for ensuring the accuracy of the total lifting
height, the motor rotation errors, the rope tension, and
distance of ascender stretch and shrink should be estimated
and offset. Third, the weight of the new frame body was 40%
lighter than the conventional one. Fourth, it contributed the
even-balance that the inclination angle of the new frame body
was less than 3 degrees in the lifting movement. Testing in the
realistic environment is remained for the future work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by DOCON, Inc. The authors
express their sincere gratitude for meaningful assistance.
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