This study proposes two robust controllers for a ship-mounted container crane based on the back-stepping sliding mode control technique. The ship crane system is operated under complex conditions, in which the disturbances caused by the viscoelasticity of seawater and the flexibility of handling wire ropes are fully considered.

This paper proposes a second-order sliding mode controller for a three-dimensional overhead crane in an extremely complicated operation with uncertain system parameters. Three actuators composed of trolley-moving, bridge-traveling, and cargo-hoisting forces simultaneously drive fine outputs comprising bridge motion, trolley translation, cable length, and two payload swing angles. Simulation and experiment are performed to investigate the controller qualities.

A 3D overhead crane is an underactuated system consisting of five outputs: trolley position, bridge translation, cable length, and two cargo swings. These outputs are controlled by three actuators for cargo hoisting, trolley motion, and bridge traveling. This study proposes the use of a nonlinear controller that performs five tasks concurrently: cargo hoisting, trolley tracking, bridge motion, payload vibration suppression during transport, and cargo swing elimination at the destination.

An overhead crane transfers the payloads of various volumes and weights depending on the each operation case. The friction factors characterized by damped coefficients can be changed in connection with operating environment. This study develops an adaptive version of sliding mode controller for the overhead cranes without priori information of system parameters composed of cargo mass and damped aspects.

Based on two nonlinear control techniques composed of partial feedback linearization and sliding mode control, the robust nonlinear controllers are successfully designed in the case of crane’s complicated operation in which a combination of trolley translation and tower rotation is considered. The proposed controllers concurrently implement four duties well: rotating tower and moving trolley to desired positions from their initial positions precisely, keeping small the cargo swings during transport process, and completely suppressing them at cargo destination.

This study proposes a second-order sliding mode controller for 3D overhead cranes in an extremely complicated operation. Three actuators composed of trolley moving, bridge travelling, and cargo-hoisting forces simultaneously drive five outputs comprising bridge motion, trolley translation, cable length, and two payload swing angles. Simulation and experiment were performed to investigate controller qualities. The proposed controller asymptotically stabilizes and consistently maintains system response even when some system parameters were widely varied.