INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY FOR TRUCK CRANE ACCIDENT PREVENTION

Side- and shock-loading of cranes can cause boom and turret drive gear failures with fatal results. However, traditional overload systems do not protect against these types of critical loading conditions, and c rane capacity charts only consider the normal loading case, vertical l ifts. In the maintenance of bridges, crane operators in any state depa rtment of transportation are presented with situations in which they h ave to pull debris and entire trees that are lodged against bridges. D ragging and shock-loading are commonplace. Researchers from the Constr uction Automation and Robotics Laboratory at North Carolina State Univ ersity have developed an innovative crane monitoring system capable of warning an operator who enters a danger zone and storing information about critical events on an electronic device. Acting like a black box on an airplane, the storage device allows this information to be down loaded by a supervisor in order to assess how a particular crew ''work ed'' the crane. This paper presents the results of this project and di scusses the basic components of the accident prevention system for cra nes.