Modelling and enhanced coupling control for rotary overhead cranes to mitigate both swing and rotation of long-size loads utilizing Lyapunov-based adaptive transformer

During crane cargo transportation, suppressing load swing induced by trolley movement is a critical concern. For long-size loads, however, both swing and rotational motions often occur simultaneously, thereby complicating the transport process. Moreover, model uncertainties and external disturbances can degrade system robustness, leading to reduced transport efficiency and safety. These challenges present significant obstacles to achieving safe and efficient operations. To address these issues, this paper first develops a rotary overhead crane model that incorporates a slewing mechanism. Subsequently, a state-enhanced coupling control strategy is proposed to effectively suppress both swing and rotation during the transport of long-size loads. To further enhance robustness against modelling uncertainties and external disturbances, a coupling-aware Lyapunov-based Adaptive Transformer (C-LyAT), developed from the baseline LyAT framework for the proposed coupling controller, is integrated as an online uncertainty estimator to provide feedforward compensation with Lyapunov-derived weight adaptation. Finally, simulations are performed to validate the transient performance and robustness of the proposed method.