Crane Operation Support System with Damping Control Function Using Model Predictive Control

This study presents a tactile sharing scheme to assist slewing crane operators with a force-feedback joystick. The proposed method utilizes a joystick-driven control system to position the boom's swing angle at a target value while suppressing load sway, a critical factor for safety and efficiency. The system adopts a haptic-shared approach to enhance operator control and proficiency. First, an automatic damping control system was developed to suppress suspended load swing by scaling and feeding back the estimated reaction force at the boom tip to the crane's joystick. The system achieves load damping by using velocity commands from the force-feedback joystick, which responds to feedback forces when the operator disengages from it. The automatic damping system integrates with a model predictive control (MPC) system to ensure the boom slew angle tracks the target value. A control system for the boom slew angle, including vibration suppression via the force-feedback joystick, was developed. To integrate the two systems, a decoupling controller was introduced to decouple the automatic vibration control from the MPC for the boom slew angle. Additionally, a virtual target generator was implemented to eliminate steady-state deviations. The proposed method effectively suppressed load sway while ensuring the boom slew angle tracked the target value by applying the control law as a target force to the reaction force-feedback joystick. This approach enabled the creation of a haptic-shared operation support system to assist human operators.