Model Predictive Control for Improving Operational Efficiency of Overhead Cranes

Model predictive control (MPC) has been successfully applied to many transportation systems. For the control of overhead cranes, existing MPC approaches mainly focus on improving the regulation performance, such as tracking error or steady-state error. In this paper, energy efficiency as well as safety is newly considered in our proposed MPC approach. Based on the system model designed, the MPC approach is applied to minimize an objective function that is formulated as the integration of energy consumption and swing angle. In our approach, promising results in terms of low energy consumption and small swing angle can be found, whilst the solutions obtained can satisfy all practical constraints. Our test results indicate that the MPC approach can ensure stability and robustness of improving energy efficiency and safety. Keyword : overhead crane; model predictive control; open-loop control; anti swing; energy efficiency