Semi-autonomous system for carrying and placing elongate objects

An apparatus comprising:

• a gantry subassembly comprising:
• a bridge member for laterally spanning, in use, a selected section of a work site;
• and,
• a gantry drive system for effecting travel of the gantry subassembly along a first path of the selected section of the work site;
• a tram subassembly movably mounted on the gantry subassembly, said tram subassembly comprising:
• a tram;
• and,
• a tram drive system for effecting travel of the tram along a second path along the span of the bridge member;
• an actuation subassembly mounted on the tram subassembly comprising:
• a motion actuator;
• and,
• an actuator drive system for effecting travel along a third path generally perpendicular to the second path, linear movement on a path parallel to the first path, and rotational movement about an axis of the third path;
• a gripper subassembly suspended from, and movable with, the motion actuator of the actuation subassembly, the gripper subassembly comprising:
• an arm suspended from the motion actuator;
• and,
• a plurality of grippers suspended from the arm for gripping and releasing the object, each gripper comprising at least one pair of articulatable fingers biased towards each other in a partially closed spaced relationship and a finger actuation member for opening and closing the at least one pair of fingers;
• and,
• an autonomous control system comprising:
• a sensing function;
• a modeling function;
• and,
• an execution function;
• the sensing function having receivers for receiving sensory signals and communicating the sensory signals to at least the modeling function,
• the modeling function dynamically calculating the position of at least the at least one gripper relative to the work site, coordinating the position calculations with a preplanned map for placement of a plurality of objects on the work site to generate coordination calculations, and communicating the coordination calculations to the execution function, and
• the execution function communicating motion signals to one or more of the gantry drive system, the tram drive system, and the actuator drive system for coordinated movement along one or more of the first path, the second path, the third path, the parallel path, and the rotational axis, respectively, to position the gripper subassembly for one or more of lifting, transporting and placing the plurality of objects.