Abstract
Human operators have difficulty driving cranes
quickly, accurately, and safely because the heavy structure of the
crane responds slowly and its payload oscillates. Manipulation difficulty
is increased by nonintuitive control interfaces (such as buttons,
levers, and joysticks) that require substantial experience to
master. This paper presents a new type of interface that allows
operators to drive a crane by simply moving a hand-held radiofrequency
tag through the desired path. Real-time location sensors
are used to track the movements of the tag and its position is
used in a feedback control loop to drive the crane. Unfortunately,
crane movements usually induce large-amplitude payload oscillations.
Therefore, an input-shaping control element is used to limit
payload swing. Experimental results on an industrial bridge crane
validate the controller performance