Pay load Stabilization for Offshore Cranes: A Unified Controller Based on Flatness

Abstract

Crane-based handling operations represent a vital part of today's maritime sector. To guarantee both safe and efficient payload handling with ship cranes, payload oscillations induced by the sea swell have to be damped. Approaches for payload stabilization usually consider either vertical position control (Active Heave Compensation, AHC) or sway reduction (Anti Sway Control, ASC). In this paper, a unified control scheme for spatial payload stabilization is proposed, utilizing the differential flatness of the crane system. The presented framework inverts the nonlinear payload dynamics by means of the flat mapping, thus facilitating controller design. Furthermore, the approach provides a systematic way to include the sea disturbance in the controller. Redundancy of the considered knuckle boom crane is exploited to track secondary control objectives. A related cost function weighting the crane's manipulability is derived and used in an optimization-based target selector. The controller design is evaluated in simulation for varying sea disturbances. The results suggest good AHC and ASC capabilities, where the payload's position error is reduced up to 60% for light to medium sea states.