The Full-Automatic Traffic Cone Placement and Retrieval System Based on Smart Manipulator

As a traffic safety protection device, traffic cones have been widely used and are effective in the prevention of accidents. The current traffic cone placement and retrieval system usually has fixed trajectory, sophisticated work flow and high failure rates. To solve these problems, a novel system that can conveniently adjust the location of deploying and retrieving cones is proposed. This system is composed of a flexible manipulator based on the active-passive joint coupling technology, a mechanical claw and a retrieval device that can directly grab vertical cones. According to the kinematics model, the workspace analysis model is established with the constraints of safety boundaries and mechanism coupling conditions. The path of the mechanical claw is planned, and the dynamic parameters are deduced. Meanwhile, a control strategy based on dynamic monitoring technology of traffic cones are proposed. The prototype test shows that the proposed system can deploy and retrieve cones flexibly and quickly, and it can be used to carry out the separation and protection tasks at traffic accident scenes or road work zones.