Attitude control for an actuated load attached to an overhead crane

Gantry or overhead cranes are widespread in industrial buldings, hangars and other facilities. For an aerospace application, it is desirable to use them for precise positioning of measurement hardware. For this, an innovative measurement gondola with an actuator that can rotate in two axes is attached to the crane hook. An intelligent control is applied to satisfy the need that position and orientation of the gondola can be varied in any way. In this contribution, we derive a detailed simulation model for this setup and compare two different approaches for control: a centralized decoupling controller vs. a decentralized controller.