Control methods for gantry crane

The paper presents theory and experiments carried out on the scale physical model of a gantry crane supporting theoretical lectures on Model Predictive Control (MPC). The optimal control for scale physical model of a gantry crane providing antisway control task can be computed using efficient methods which satisfy specified boundary conditions and minimize load swings. From the point of view of the computational complexity the MPC theory is a little more complicated than in the case of standard controllers. But an application of the MPC facilitates greatly setup of control parameters including constraints against complicated standard controllers constants searching. Copyright (C) 2000 IFAC.