Publications / 1993 Proceedings of the 10th ISARC, Houston, USA
The purpose of this paper is to compare the productivity between a prototype pipe manipulator and a telescopic rough-terrain crane in handling pipes in a piping material laydown yard. Productivity data where collected by video-taping identical operations done by two machines in the field. The productivity data are evaluated in terms of total cycle time and total work-hours. The results show that the pipe manipulator has a slightly shorter cycle time but is out performed by cherry picker by ratio of 5.16:1 in terms of total work hours, primarily by grippers restriction on lifting one pipe per lift. A discussion of possible ways to improve the manipulators productivity in handling pipes reveals two major directions for enhancements: (1) enabling multi-pipe lift and (2) designing a better control system. These enhancements not only augment the manipulators productivity to be comparative to that of cherry picker but also reduce the cycle time by 67%