Anti-swing Control of Overhead Cranes

This paper presents a novel method for adaptive anti-swing fuzzy logic control for overhead cranes with hoisting. The control action is distributed between three fuzzy logic controllers (FLC’s): trolley controller, hoist controller, and anti-swing controller. A method for varying the ranges of the variables of the three controllers as a function of the crane’s parameters and/or motion variables is presented. Simulation examples show that the proposed controller can successfully drive overhead cranes under various operating conditions.

The trial stereovision is manufactured which is a non-contact sensor and tried to control the overhead crane by visual feedback. The stereovision has four degree of freedom for tracking and gazing with two cameras. The three-dimensional position of the crane load is provided with image data of two cameras, the focus distance, and four-vision drive angles and is used for crane control. The desired angles to control the stereovision is obtained using inverse kinematics that a point of intersection of two camera optical axes seems to always accord with the crane load center. On the other hand, in the overhead crane, positioning and vibration suppression of the crane load are controlled, using three-dimensional position of the crane load measured by the stereovision. The overhead crane load is transported by the simultaneous traveling, traversing and hoisting motions of the trolley and swings with the vibrating amplitude and its direction. Therefore the dynamic overhead crane model has five degree of freedom. Variable feedback digital gains of the trolley to control the crane load are pursued in consideration of the rope length change. Experimental results of the positioning and swing control of the crane load and tracking of the stereovision in case of the load transportation with up and down hoisting are reported, and the possibility of zoom lens activity is described. The experimental results of overhead crane control by visual feedback show that the control system was effective

The purpose of crane control is to transport the payload precisely to the desired destination while minimizing rope swing. Aiming at such an objective, this work thoroughly analyzes the dynamic system of the overhead crane with double-pendulum effects. The findings indicate that, despite being physically underactuated, the overhead crane can retain a fully actuated form mathematically. This form guides the natural transition of the controlled plant from the underactuated system to a fully actuated system (FAS). Within the FAS framework, the behaviors of both the original actuated and unactuated variables are interpreted as indirect outcomes of the control actions applied to the FAS. Consequently, the challenges of trolley positioning and swing elimination are reduced to control issues of FAS. Furthermore, a well-designed dynamical term is integrated into the system space of FAS to enhance swing suppression. The integration further leads to the control scheme for precise positioning and anti-swing, offering a fresh perspective on crane system control. Extensions to the cases with uncertainties and input saturation have also been discussed. Finally, we compare several representative methods for crane control and demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms them.

The objective of this study is to design a new anti-swing control scheme for overhead cranes, the performance of which equals or possibly surpasses the performance of a skilled crane operator. In this study, the anti-swing control problem is solved as a trajectory-tracking control problem. An anti-swing trajectory control scheme is designed based on the Lyapunov stability theorem, and then extended to an adaptive scheme to cope with parametric uncertainties, in which sufficient damping of load swing is achieved by modifying the reference trajectory of the trolley. The proposed control consists of a feed forward control and a non-linear PID control with gravity compensation, which guarantees asymptotic stability while keeping all internal signals bounded. The proposed control, allowing high-speed load hoisting, also guarantees accurate control of trolley position and rope length with optimum damping. In summary, the proposed control realizes a typical crane operation in practice, maintains its control performance in the presence of parametric uncertainties, and has a simple structure for easy implementation and gain tuning. The performance of the proposed control is shown with computer simulations.

As typical underactuated systems, overhead cranes are widely utilized in heavy-load transportation. However, their strong nonlinear coupling and underactuated characteristics complicate precise positioning and payload swing suppression. Furthermore, model uncertainties and external disturbances in practical environments increase control complexity and degrade system performance. To address these issues, this paper develops a trajectory tracking control scheme based on time delay estimation (TDE). Specifically, some transformations are made for the dynamic model and the TDE mechanism is used to estimate unknown nonlinear dynamics and external disturbances. Then, a sliding mode trajectory tracking controller, along with the TDE mechanism, is proposed for the trajectory tracking control and uncertainties estimation of the overhead crane system. Rigorous mathematical analysis is provided to demonstrate the asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in comparison with the existing control methods.

In actual overhead cranes, double-pendulum (DP) effect and uncertainty will inevitably occur. This study considers these effects to improve position tracking accuracy and sway regulation for perturbed DP overhead cranes. A prescribed-performance-control based sliding-mode control (SMC-PPC) scheme to regulate the sways and satisfy some transient and steady-state (TSS) performance metrics specifications on trolley tracking error. A prescribed performance function (PPF) and an error-transformation-function (ETF) are investigated so that performance metrics on trolley tracking error can be achieved. The challenge from the unavoidable friction is circumvented using a recently developed continuously differentiable friction model. The closed-loop stability is analysed using Lyapunov method. Simulation experiments show that both hook and payload TSS sways are effectively regulated and that trolley error converged into a pre-defined narrow vestigial set, having a rate of convergence of at least a preassigned value, exhibiting maximum overshoots and undershoots below some small enough pre-set values.KeywordsSliding mode controlPrescribed performance controlUnder-actuated systemsLyapunov method

An adaptive sliding mode control (ASMC) method with moving sliding surface (MSS) is proposed for anti-swing and positioning control of two-dimensional underactuated overhead crane in this paper. The designed moving sliding surface can change its slope in real time according to displacement error and speed error, thereby tracking performance of the trolley is improved. At the same time, a dynamic exponential term is added into the moving sliding surface so as to drive initial state variables into the sliding surface quickly to ensure the global robustness of the crane system. Finally, the controller switching gain is adjusted by an adaptive control law, which can effectively reduce chattering phenomenon occurring in the phase of sliding mode control. The controller can realize rapid positioning of the trolley and anti-swing control of the load under the condition of rope length changing. The global stability analysis of the suggested controller is given in the paper. The final simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed controller.

This paper is concerned with control design for a generalized discrete-time Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system. The Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system generally describes nonlinear systems by employing local linear system representations. It is a great tool to analyze a nonlinear system and to design a stabilizing controller for it. However, there is a case where a controller design for a nonlinear system based on the Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system becomes difficult due to its representation. A generalized fuzzy system to be considered in this paper describes even a wider class of nonlinear systems by representing locally nonlinear systems, and gives a different representation from the standard Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy system, which leads to a rather easy controller design. For such a generalized system, a stabilizing controller design method is proposed by introducing a new class of nonlinear controllers. Then, the resulting closed-loop system becomes a fuzzy system with linear system structures locally, which makes the control design easier. Stabilizing controller design conditions are given in terms of a set of linear matrix inequalities(LMIs), which are easily numerically solvable. A relaxation method is used to reduce the conservatism of design conditions. Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate our nonlinear control design and to show the effectiveness over other existing results.

This paper proposes a new trajectory-generation scheme for a high-performance anti-swing control of overhead cranes, where the trajectory-generation problem is solved as a kinematic problem. First, a new anti-swing control law is designed based on the load-swing dynamics, for which the Lyapunov stability theorem is used as a mathematical tool. Then a new trajectory-generation scheme is proposed based on the anti-swing control law and typical crane operation in practice. For g iven hoisting motions, trolley-traveling trajectory references are computed based on the concept of minimum-time control, and then anti-swing trajectories are generated based on the trajectory references through the anti-swing control law. The new trajectory-generation scheme generates a typical anti-swing trajectory in industry with high-speed load hoisting. The effectiveness of the proposed trajectory-generation scheme is shown by generating high-performance anti-swing trajectories with high hoisting speed and hoisting ratio.

A modal H∞-norm-based performance requirement for damage-tolerant active controller design

An overhead crane transports cargoes of various weights and volumes depending on the operation case. Friction factors characterized by damped coefficients are changeable in terms of the operating environment. In this study, an adaptive version of the sliding mode control of a crane system is developed in the case of no priori knowledge of the payload mass and damped elements. Using two inputs, namely, trolley driving force and cargo lifting force, the proposed adaptive robust controller simultaneously executes four duties, including tracking the trolley, hoisting the cargo, keeping the cargo swing small during transient state, and completely eliminating the payload angle at steady destination. Numerical simulations and experiments are conducted to investigate the quality of the proposed controller. The results show that the proposed controller works well and all system responses are asymptotically stabilized.

This paper proposes an anti-sway controller for two-dimensional overhead cranes. The controller is of the position-commanding type, i.e., it sends position commands to the position-controlled trolley, and it uses the sensor information of the payload sway angle. The position commands are determined so that the trolley tracks the desired position signal sent from an upper-level controller and also so that the payload sway is damped. The sway damping is realized by a leaky integral controller, which employs a high-pass filtered time integral of the sway angle. In addition, arbitrary limits can be imposed on the first and second derivatives of the position command, and thus it is applicable to cases where the desired position signal from the upper-level controller is nonsmooth or discontinuous. Due to these features, the controller is expected to be useful in both human-operated and autonomous systems. The controller was validated with a laboratory setup. This paper also presents an algorithm that can be attached to the proposed controller to prevent the overshoot, which can take place when the desired position signal is discontinuous.

An overhead crane is an underactuated system with less driving force than its degrees of freedom, which suffers from such factors as complex coupling between states, continuous disturbances, and so on. This paper designs an energy-based adaptive controller, which, together with a constructed fuzzy observer, makes an overhead crane stable at an “inclined” equilibrium point. Specifically, based on Lagrange's method, the traditional model for a crane is transformed into a novel dynamic equation expressed in new coordinates, based on which, uncertain disturbance within the system is then estimated by constructing a fuzzy observer, and an energy-based adaptive controller is subsequently designed to achieve satisfactory control performance. The closed-loop system is proven to be asymptotically stable by Lyapunov techniques and LaSalle's invariance theorem. Finally, some simulation results are included to show the advantages of the proposed control strategy.

An overhead crane transfers the payloads of various volumes and weights depending on the each operation case. The friction factors characterized by damped coefficients can be changed in connection with operating environment. This study develops an adaptive version of sliding mode controller for the overhead cranes without priori information of system parameters composed of cargo mass and damped aspects. The proposed controller simultaneously executes five duties consisted of tracking the trolley and bridge, hoisting the cargo, keeping the payload swings small during the transport process, and absolutely suppressing the cargo vibrations at destination of trolley and bridge. Both simulation and experiment results indicate that the adaptive robust controller asymptotically stabilizes all crane system responses.

Control design in the longitudinal-vertical channel is studied for tilt-rotor aircraft at low speed flight. The famous XV-15 tilt-rotor aircraft is used as a prototype. A model predictive control (MPC) design is developed based on a state-space model in a cascaded architecture. The MPC algorithm considers a terminal cost in its objective function so as to ensure close-loop stability, and an error-rate term is introduced in order to improve transient performance. By transforming constraints, the controller designed based on a linearized model at single operating point is applied to the whole stage at low speed flight. It means that there is not switching as gain scheduling in the realization of the longitudinal control. The simulation results show that the flight control system presents satisfied performance and robustness.