Novel Approach for Adaptive Tracking Control of a 3-D Overhead Crane System

Traditionally, overhead crane systems are operated by humans. However, automatic operation would reduce both the risk and the personnel costs. From the engineering viewpoint, the most important issues in crane motion are high positioning accuracy, short transportation time, small sway angle, and high safety. Hence, stabilization control is particularly concerned. In this paper, a novel adaptive control scheme including both the cart motion dynamics and the swing angle dynamics is designed to ensure the stability of the closed-loop system. No system parameters are needed, and accurate position tracking as well as minimal swing is achieved. The stability of the closed-loop system is proved via Lyapunov theory. Simulation studies and experiments are performed to demonstrate the validity of the proposed control scheme.