Active control of an offshore container crane

Open sea loading/unloading cargos provides a potential solution to tack the problem related with port construction, expansion and congestion. This process involves a crane attached to a mobile harbor (MH) which can dynamically handle container from a large container anchored in deep water. The control objective during the operation is to maintain the payload in the desired position in the presence of ocean waves. This paper presents a robust control strategy for trajectory tracking and sway suppression of an offshore container crane. A fuzzy sliding mode control law is proposed for that. Experimental results are provided to indicate the efficiency of the proposed control strategy.