Crane Anti-Sway Control System with Sway Angle Feedback

The paper provides the analysis of an anti-sway control system using a gyroscope measurement as a sway angle feedback. The system consists of two devices. The first device is the transmitter containing a gyroscope, a microcontroller and a wireless device to send a measured data. The second device is a receiver containing a wireless device to read measured data, a microcontroller and a communication module to organize an industrial network with an electrical drive system. The main idea of a payload sway reduction is to provide the change of traveling mechanism speed reference in a special way. The objective of the study is to indicate a feasibility and performance of the designed anti-sway control system. The analysis of the system was performed using a computer modeling method by Matlab software (The MathWorks, Inc). A computer model of an overhead crane was used to study the operation of the anti-sway control system. The transients of the sway angle and the velocity of the traveling mechanism were obtained. The anti-sway control system makes it possible to adjust an extent of a sway compensation that the transients demonstrate. The proposed system has a rather simple structure and does not require high skills of the personnel to setup and adjust the system. It does not require a powerful hardware equipment and high processing power to create a mathematical model. The designed system can be integrated in almost each electrical variable drive system using industrial network interfaces or another means to provide an additional speed reference for the drive. The designed anti-sway control system provides for the production operation time decrease because of the precise positioning of a payload.