Combination of ADRC and distributed delays shapers: application for position control and sway reduction in gantry crane

This paper presents a novel combination controller design for improving the performance of the crane system. The considered crane has one control input (trolley force) whereas there are two variables to be controlled (trolley position and payload sway angle). A popular practical approach for crane control is the combination of the conventional input shaping technique and a traditional PID controller but its performance is easily degraded by disturbance and parameter uncertainty. The combination of active disturbance rejection control (ADRC) with distributed input shaping proposed in this paper comes up with a simultaneous trolley-position regulation in presence of disturbance and sway suppression. The ADRC is used to control the trolley position precisely and reject disturbance while keeping the simplicity in design as PID controller, and distributed input shaping plays the role of payload vibration suppression. Simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.