A Wireless MEMS-based Swing Angle Measurement System

Real time swing angle measurement can be used to improve the efficiency and quality for crane control system. This paper presents a wireless microelectromechanical system (MEMS) based swing angle measurement system. The system consists of two MEMS-based attitude heading reference system (AHRS) sensing units with wireless communication, which are mounted on the hook (or payload) and the jib (or base) of the crane, respectively. The orientation of the payload and the base can be measured by the mounted MEMS-based AHRS sensors. Wireless Zigbee communication is employed to transmit the orientation of the payload to the sensor unit mounted on the base which measures the orientation of the base. Therefore, the swing angles of the payload can be calculated based on the two measured orientation parameters. Preliminary experiments were performed to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed swing angle measurement system.