Adaptive trajectory tracking control for a four-rope crane

In practice, overhead cranes often suffer from uncertain system parameters such as the payload mass and friction-related coefficients. These uncertainties may seriously degrade the performance of corresponding controllers. Multi-rope cranes may encounter such problem as well. To solve this problem, we develop an adaptive trajectory tracking controller for a four-rope crane in this paper. The proposed method can achieve fast trolley positioning and rapid payload swing elimination even in the presence of uncertain system parameters. The performance of the closed-loop system is theoretically ensured by Lyapunov techniques and Barbalat´s lemmas. Furthermore, simulation results are subsequently provided to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the designed controller.