Antiswing Control and Trajectory Planning for Offshore Cranes: Design and Experiments

In offshore environments, safe management of heavy payloads requires precise crane operations to avoid collisions with obstacles and adjacent equipment.Uncontrolled residual swinging of suspended payloads can quickly evolve into high-risk situations, which, if left unchecked, might lead to significant equipment failures and associated costs.This paper explores a control methodology designed specifically to eliminate payload swing in offshore cranes.We present a trajectory tracking technique explicitly crafted for swing suppression under control, rooted in the principles of the iterative learning algorithm and based on physics.The proposed antiswing control strategy guarantees asymptotic convergence of the payload's swing, angular velocity, and angular acceleration to desired values.The method was tested on a Comau robot mounted on a Stewart platform at the Norwegian Motion Laboratory.Simulation and experimental results comparing payload transfers with and without applying the anti-swing control method validates it's effectiveness.