Planning of Mobile Crane Walking Operations in Congested Industrial Construction Sites

Abstract

The trend toward more compact designs and congested site layouts makes it challenging for lift planners to provide feasible lift paths for mobile cranes, confronting the added risk of potential collisions when maneuvering through on-site obstacles. In some cases, particularly in congested industrial modular projects, it is inevitable for mobile cranes to walk with loads to a position with sufficient clearance to perform the lifts and place the objects in their final set position. This study contributes to the body of knowledge by introducing a comprehensive lift planning framework to plan complicated lifts involving mobile crane walking operations. Due to the lack of reliable and accurate plans for such lifts in practice and the added complexities, they are often eluded by practitioners compared with the more straightforward pick-and-set scenarios. This study proposes an algorithm for optimized planning of crane walking–involved lift operations borrowing an obstacle avoidance technique from robotics. The proposed path planner thoroughly considers site constraints and crane configurations to prevent collision between the crane body and the load with preinstalled objects. Actual case studies are presented to validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. The system generated the presented real-world lift in less than 5 min, satisfying the operations’ optimality, safety, and feasibility.