A feedback control system for suppressing crane oscillations with on-off motors

Crane payloads frequently swing with large amplitude motion that degrades safety and throughput. Open-loop methods have addressed this problem, but are not effective for disturbances. Closed-loop methods have also been used, but generally require the speed of the driving motors to be precisely controlled. This paper develops a feedback control method for controlling motors to cancel the measured payload oscillations by intelligently timing the ensuing on and off motor commands. The effectiveness of the oscillation suppression scheme is experimentally verified on an industrial bridge crane.