Operational Assistance System for Load Sway Suppression of an Overhead Crane

In many industrial and commercial applications,overhead cranes are widely employed for transportingloads. Therefore, the challenge of reducing load swaywhile concurrently controlling the load position has beenthe subject of numerous research projects. Anti-swaysystems perform more efficiently and at a lower costwhen positioning accuracy is improved and load sway iseliminated. But many of the researched systems to date,ignore the operator's role in the loop. In this study aftermodeling the overhead crane, a haptic joystick is used toestablish an operator assistance system. After that, theModel Predictive Control (MPC) algorithm is employedto suppress load sway. The operator of this assistancesystem controls the overhead crane using a hapticjoystick whose stiffness is determined by the load'sdistance from the target as well as velocity gradients.The controller eliminates load oscillations by settingspeed limitations and updating user commands via auser-friendly interface. The system is designated to takethe operator’s role into account, with maximalcompliance with the operator’s online commands. Theeffectiveness of the proposed method is validatedthrough comparison with other controllers such as modelpredictors and input-shapers.

Keywords:

Overhead crane , Load sway suppression , Operator in the loop , MPC , Haptic joystick