Collaborative Antiswing Hoisting Control for Dual Rotary Cranes With Motion Constraints

With large load capacity and flexible payload attitude adjustment capability, dual rotary cranes (DRCs) play crucial roles in infrastructure construction with heavy hoisting demands. However, as a kind of collaborative control systems, DRCs have complex collaborative constraints, and large-scale payloads cannot be simply regarded as mass points; moreover, due to the lack of control inputs, some state variables can only be indirectly controlled through complicated nonlinear coupling relationships, which make the controller design and corresponding analysis particularly difficult. Additionally, in practical applications of DRCs, many factors (such as boom motion overshoots, inaccurate gravity (torque) compensation, etc.) are prone to result in unexpected steady errors, large payload swing, and boom collisions, which may result in inaccurate assembly, and even lead to safety accidents. To this end, this article proposes an adaptive nonlinear proportional-integral-derivative-like collaborative control method for DRCs, which can realize accurate and efficient antiswing hoisting. To our knowledge, this is the first controller embedded with integral terms without any linearization during the controller design or stability analysis, which can effectively reduce steady errors, and keep boom motions within safety ranges by adaptive gravity (torque) compensation and elaborately designed constraint terms. Theoretically, the closed-loop stability and convergence are proven through strict mathematical analysis by using Lyapunov techniques and LaSalle's invariance theorem. Finally, several groups of hardware experimental results are presented for effectiveness and robustness verification.

Automated summary

This article proposes an adaptive nonlinear proportional-integral-derivative-like collaborative control method for dual rotary cranes (DRCs), which can achieve accurate and efficient antiswing hoisting. It is the first controller embedded with integral terms without any linearization during the controller design or stability analysis. The control method effectively reduces steady errors and keeps boom motions within safety ranges through adaptive gravity (torque) compensation and elaborately designed constraint terms. The closed-loop stability and convergence are proven through strict mathematical analysis.