Anti-sway and Motion Planning Control of Overhead Cranes

Overhead cranes are usually operated manually to move heavy loads. Fast and smooth movements of the loads are the main objectives of crane operations. However, both the objectives always contradict with each other, so that it is hard to achieve positioning and swing control simultaneously by using conventional methods. This paper presents the adaptive fuzzy sliding mode controller (AFSMC) to regulate the crane position and hoist (lower) the loads while keeping the load swing small. A motion planning scheme is also presented to illustrate the tracking control performance. Besides, this work presents the adaptable slopes of sliding surface to improve the system insensitivities to the uncertainty and disturbance. The stability of proposed AFSMC is also provided. Several experiments demonstrate the precise positioning of trolley, high speed hoisting (lowering) of the loads, and small loads swing during the crane operations.