Sensorless anti-swing control strategy for automatic gantry crane system using reference modifier

A good control performance of automatic gantry crane system is commonly achieved by feedback anti-swing control. Hence, sensors are indispensable instrument for feedback signals. However, sensing the payload motion of a real gantry crane, particularly swing motion, is not simple and often costly. Therefore, a sensorless automatic gantry crane control strategy using reference modifier is developed and proposed in this paper. A reference modifier is introduced to produce anti-swing cart motion. An experimental study using lab-scale automatic gantry crane is carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. The results show that the proposed sensorless anti-swing control strategy is effective for suppressing the swing motion since it gives similar performance to that of sensor-based anti-swing control strategy.