Flexible Modeling and Simulation Architecture for Haptic Control of Maritime Cranes and Robotic Arms

This paper introduces a modular prototyping system architecture that allows for the modeling, simulation and control of different maritime cranes or robotic arms with different kinematic structures and degrees of freedom using the Bond Graph Method. The resulting models are simulated in a virtual environment and controlled using the same input haptic device, which also provides the user with a valuable force feedback. The arm joint angles can be calculated at runtime according to the specific model of the robot to be controlled. The idea is to develop a library of crane beams, joints and actuator models that can be used as modules for simulating different cranes. The base module of this architecture is the crane beam model. Using different joint modules to connect several such models, different crane prototypes can be easily built. The library also includes a simplified model of a vessel to which the crane models can be connected in order to get a complete model. Related simulations were carried out using the so-called 20-sim simulator to validate efficiency and flexibility of the proposed architecture. In particular, a two-beam crane model connected to a simplified vessel model was implemented. To control the arm, an omega.7 from Force Dimension was used as an input haptic device.