DEVELOPMENT OF AN OPTIMIZED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER FOR

STABILIZATION IN GANTRY CRANE SYSTEM BASED ON SMELL AGENT

OPTIMIZATION

BY

MOHAMMED, MOHAMMED BUHARI

(M.Eng/EEE/17/1240)

NOVEMBER, 2023
DEVELOPMENT OF AN OPTIMIZED SLIDING MODE CONTROLLER FOR
STABILIZATION IN GANTRY CRANE SYSTEM BASED ON SMELL AGENT
OPTIMIZATION

BY

MOHAMMED, MOHAMMED BUHARI

(M.Eng/EEE/17/1240)

SUPERVISOR

Engr. Prof. I. T. THUKU

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF

ELECTRICAL/ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING,
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE AWARD OF
MASTER OF ENGINEERING OF THE MODIBBO ADAMA UNIVERSITY,
YOLA

NOVEMBER, 2023

i
 DECLARATION
I hereby declare that this project was written by me, and it is a record of my own research
work. It has not been presented before in any previous application for a higher degree. All
references cited have been duly acknowledged.

____________________________ _________________
Mohammed, Mohammed Buhari Date

ii
 DEDICATION
This Thesis is dedicated to Almighty Allah, Prophet Muhammad and my Parents.

iii
 APPROVAL PAGE
This thesis entitled “Development of an Optimized Sliding Mode Controller for
Stabilization in Gantry Crane System Based on Smell Agent Optimization” meets the
regulations governing the award of Master Degree of Engineering (Control and
Instrumentation) of Modibbo Adama University, Yola and is approved for its contribution
to knowledge and literary presentation.

____________________________ _________________
Name and Signature Date
Supervisor

____________________________ _________________
Name and Signature Date
Internal Examiner

____________________________ ________________
Name, address and Signature Date
External Examiner

____________________________ _________________
Name and Signature Date
Head of Department

____________________________ _________________
Name and Signature Date
Dean, School of Postgraduate studies

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Almighty Allah for seeing me through the program. My deepest
gratitude goes to my family for their unflagging love and support throughout my life; this
thesis would have been impossible without them. I am forever indebted to my parents, for
their care, love, understanding and support.

I will also like to offer my special thanks thanks to my uncle, Engr. Jimmy Oliver
longkwang for his mentorship and financial support

I offered my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Engr.Prof. I.T. Thuku, and my

Content reader, Engr.I.A.Usman for their support and encouragement throughout my
research. I also want to appreciate the Head of Department and the entire academic and
non-academic staff of Electrical/ Electronic Engineering Department, especially my
Lecturers in Control and Instrumentation who have impacted me with tremendous
knowledge.

I would like to use this opportunity to thank my colleagues for their support,
friendliness and understanding throughout my study. I also appreciate my lovely family
for their love and care throughout my study. Finally, my wife who stood by me, who has
been my strength and pillar, thank you.

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 ABSTRACT
This research presents the development of a sliding mode controller with Smell Agent
Optimization (SAO) Scheme for stabilization in Gantry Crane System (GCS). Gantry
crane is a type of overhead crane with single or double girder configuration supported by
freestanding legs that move on a wheel or along track or rail system. Gantry cranes have
applications in mining, steel mills, ports, special construction sites, assembly lines and
factory for transporting heavy loads. Inertia forces due to prescribed motion of the payload
and excitation of the base due to motions in the supporting mechanism of the crane,
external disturbance such as wind could result in unwanted motions of the crane. These
factors generate swinging of the load during the transportation process. Existing nonlinear
controllers show a good system performance when compared with linear controllers
whose performance deteriorate with increase in operation range and uncertainty, hence the
need for nonlinear controller that will guarantee system performance in presence of
uncertainty. To achieve this, the Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) augmented with Smell
Agent Optimization (SAO) Scheme for stabilization in Gantry Crane System(GCS) is
developed. Modeling and simulation of the GCS with the developed controller was carried
out using MATLAB/Simulink R2019b. Performance of the GCS with the developed
SMC-SAO controller was evaluated based on steady state error, overshoot and settling
time as performance metrics and the results were compared with conventional SMC
controller as reported in literature. The developed SMC-SAO outperformed conventional
SMC controller in terms of system stabilization. There was 46.12% improvement in
settling time, 83.50% improvement in overshoot and 99.99% improvement in steady state
error in terms of cart position and swing angle.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ..................................................................................................................ii
DEDICATION .....................................................................................................................iii
APPROVAL PAGE ............................................................................................................. iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................. v
ABSTRACT ......................................................................................................................... vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS ....................................................................................................vii
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................ x
LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................. xi
LIST OF APPENDICES .....................................................................................................xii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................xiii
LIST OF SYMBOLS .......................................................................................................... xv
CHAPTER ONE ................................................................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 Background of the Study ................................................................................................. 1
1.2 Statement of the Problem ................................................................................................ 3
1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Research................................................................................ 3
1.4 Significance of the Research ........................................................................................... 4
1.5 Scope of the Research ..................................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER TWO .................................................................................................................. 5
LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................................................... 5
2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 5
2.2 Crane ............................................................................................................................... 5
2.2.1 Types of cranes ............................................................................................................. 5
2.2.2 Gantry crane ................................................................................................................ 7
2.2.3 Modeling of gantry crane system ................................................................................. 7
2.3 Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) .................................................................................... 10
2.3.1 Advantages of using sliding mode controller ............................................................. 10
2.3.2. Disadvantages of sliding mode controller ................................................................ 10
2.3.3. Design of SMC .......................................................................................................... 10
2.3.3.1 Design of Sliding Surface ........................................................................................ 11
2.3.3.2. Selection of Control Law........................................................................................ 11
2.3.3.3 Chattering effect ...................................................................................................... 11
2.4 An Overview of Position Controllers ............................................................................ 12

vii
2.4.1 Open-loop techniques................................................................................................. 12
2.4.2 Closed-loop techniques .............................................................................................. 14
2.4.2.1. Linear control technique (PID & LQR) ................................................................. 14
2.4.2.2 Adaptive control technique ..................................................................................... 16
2.4.2.3 Sliding mode control technique ............................................................................... 17
2.4.2.4 Optimal control technique (MPC & LQG) ............................................................. 18
2.4.2.5 Intelligent control technique ................................................................................... 19
2.5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 23
CHAPTER THREE............................................................................................................. 22
MATERIALS AND METHODS ........................................................................................ 22
3.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 22
3.2 Materials ....................................................................................................................... 22
3.2.1 Computer system ........................................................................................................ 22
3.2.2 MATLAB/Simulink R2019b ........................................................................................ 23
3.3 Methods ......................................................................................................................... 23
3.3.1 Development of Mathematical model of GCS dynamics ............................................ 23
3.3.2 Development of the Simulink model of the GCS based on the mathematical model of
GCS dynamics ..................................................................................................................... 26
3.3.3 Development of a sliding mode controller (SMC) for stabilization and tracking of the
position of the load of the developed GCS model. .............................................................. 27
3.3.4 Development of the Simulink model of the SMC. .............................................. 28
3.3.5. Smell Agent Optimization Technique ........................................................................ 29
3.3.5.1. Sniffing Mode ......................................................................................................... 30
3.3.5.2 Trailing mode .......................................................................................................... 31
3.3.5.3 Random mode .......................................................................................................... 31
3.3.6 Identification of parameters to be optimized from controller model................ 32
3.3.7 Formulation of optimization problem based on the Parameters obtained in 3.3.6 .. 33
3.3.8 Optimization of the weighting factor using SAO........................................................ 33
3.3.9 Simulation of the system model with the developed SAO-SMC ................................. 35
3.3.10 Performance evaluation ........................................................................................... 36
CHAPTER FOUR ............................................................................................................... 38
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS ....................................................................................... 38
4.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................... 38
4.2 Simulation Results ......................................................................................................... 38
4.2.1 Convergence of SAO .................................................................................................. 38
4.2.2 SMC Parameter Selection .......................................................................................... 39
4.2.3 Stabilization Results ................................................................................................... 39

viii
4.3 Performance Comparison .......................................................................................... 43
CHAPTER FIVE................................................................................................................. 44
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ......................................... 44
5.1 Summary........................................................................................................................ 44
5.2 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 44
5.3 Recommendations ......................................................................................................... 45
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................... 46
APPENDIX A ..................................................................................................................... 55
MATLAB CODE FOR OBJECTIVE FUNCTION ............................................................ 55
APPENDIX B ..................................................................................................................... 55
MATLAB CODE FOR SAO .............................................................................................. 55

ix
 LIST OF TABLES
Table 3. 1: Specification of Computer System ................................................................... 22
Table 3. 2: SAO Parameter ................................................................................................. 35

Table 4. 1: Properties of Best Smell Object ........................................................................ 39

Table 4. 2: Performance Comparison Between Developed SAO-SMC and SMC ............ 43

x
 LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3. 1: Model of a Gantry Set-up (Naskar and Pal, 2017) .......................................... 23
Figure 3. 2: Developed Nonlinear Simulink Model of GCS ............................................... 26
Figure 3. 3: Simulink Model of SMC ................................................................................. 29
Figure 3. 4: Flow Chart of SAO .......................................................................................... 32
Figure 3. 5: Flowchart of Objective Function Cost Evaluation .......................................... 34
Figure 3. 6: Block Diagram of the Model ........................................................................... 35
Figure 3. 7: Simulink Model of GCS using Optimized SMC ............................................. 36

Figure 4. 1: SAO Convergence Plot on Benchmark System .............................................. 38

Figure 4. 2: Linear Displacement of the Cart ...................................................................... 40
Figure 4. 3: Linear Speed of the Cart .................................................................................. 40
Figure 4. 4: Load Swing Angle ........................................................................................... 41
Figure 4. 5: Load Angular Speed ........................................................................................ 42
Figure 4. 6: Stabilizing Control Action ............................................................................... 42

xi
 LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX A : MATLAB CODE FOR OBJECTIVE FUNCTION………………55

APPENDIX B : MATLAB CODE FOR SAO ……………………………………….55

APPENDIX C: MATLAB CODE FOR GCS ……………………………………….55

xii
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Acronyms Definitions

SAO Smell Agent Optimization

IIC Immersion & Invariance Controller

GCS Gantry Crane System

PID Proportional Integral Derivative

SMC Sliding Mode Control

SSE Steady State Error

PMDC Permanent Magnet Direct Current

DC Direct Current

FIR Finite Impulse Response

LTI Linear Time Invariant

2D Two Dimensions

3D Three Dimensions

SVC Static Var Compensator

LQ Linear Quadratic

RBF Radial Basis Function

BLF Barrier Lyapunov Function

PD Proportional Derivative

T1FLPDC Type One Fuzzy Logic Proportional Derivative Controller

T2FLPDC Type Two Fuzzy Logic Proportional Derivative Controller

xiii
T1STFLDDC Type One Self Tuning Fuzzy Logic Proportional Derivative
Controlle

xiv
 LIST OF SYMBOLS
Symbol Definition

𝑥 Linear Displacement

𝑥̇ Linear speed

𝜃 Angular Displacement

𝜃̇ Angular Speed

𝑙 Length of Hoisting Cable

𝑚 Mass of Load

𝑀 Mass of Moving Cart

𝑔 Acceleration due to Gravity

𝐾 Cart coefficient of friction

𝐼 Moment of inertia of load

𝐹𝑣 Input to the cart

𝑤(𝑠, 𝑡) Transverse motion of hoisting cable around equilibrium

point

𝑆 Curvilinear coordinate on arc length along hoisting cable

𝜌 Mass per unit length of hoisting cable

𝜏 Tension in the hoisting cable at equilibrium

𝑇𝐿 Disturbance torque

𝑤(𝑥) State feedback control

𝐾𝑓𝑏𝑔𝑎𝑖𝑛 State feedback gain matrix

𝐾1 , 𝐾2 , 𝐾3 , 𝐾4 Feedback gains

xv
𝑃𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑖𝑟𝑒 Desire pole position

𝑤_𝑑 Input disturbance

𝑤_𝑖 Plant desire output

𝑦 Output of the plant

𝑒 Error

xvi
 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

Crane is a machine or device used by human to help humans to move loads, or

better known as payload, from one point to another. A crane is typically equipped with a
hoist or wire rope drum, wire ropes or chains and sheaves that can be used to lift or lower
the load or move the load horizontally. The hoist functions as a simple machine which
helps human to move loads beyond the capability of a human. There are many types of
crane, which are named based on their application: automatic crane, cab-operated crane,
cantilever gantry crane, floor-operated crane, boom crane, rotary crane, gantry crane, jib
crane, mobile crane, overhead traveling crane, power-operated crane, pulpit-operated
crane, remote-operated crane, semi gantry crane, wall-mounted crane and wall-mounted
jib crane.

In the transportation and construction companies, crane systems are rapidly deployed to
ease the transportation of heavy loads. Cranes are a crucial part of the industrial machinery
system because, they are used to carry out transportation of heavy machines or goods from
one point to another. However, in the process of transporting such loads, load swinging
occurs as a result of acceleration or deceleration of the crane which tend to affect the
positioning precision of the load (Abdullahi et al., 2018). Payload pendulation and load
position precision are two important aspects of the crane system. Undesirable crane
motions or disturbances such as load bouncing, twisting, and swinging coupled with
external disturbance such as wind are common during load hoisting operation. The
performance and productivity of the system is affected drastically due to the presence of
this unwanted motions, as they affect precise positioning of the payload (Abdullahi et al.,
2018). Accidents and damages to buildings or facilities that are close to crane could
occurred due to the swinging or pendulation of the payload (Yoon et al., 2014). Rapid
application of crane system for lifting and loads transportation in industries and ports leads
to evolvement of high-speed operating cranes. This fast speed operation in absent of
control system lead to presence of high load swing, resulting in creating a danger zone by
causing damage to equipment, facilities and structures around the crane and tend to affect
the precision in load positioning (Kim et al., 2014; Le et al., 2014).

1
Efficient controllers that will guarantee safety and performance are important due to the
fact that, these cranes are increasingly bigger and faster (Abdel-Rahman et al., 2003).
The crane system is a special case of control system (termed under actuated) in which the
number of control variables is higher than the input variables, fewer inputs are used to
control many outputs ( Biao, L. et al., 2018; Renuka & Mathew, 2013). The area of
application of the crane system at times can influence the management of the payload
swing. In some aspects, during payload transportation, large pendulation of the load is
allowed during travelling stage as long as residual pendulation at the destination point is
insignificant to prevent accurate load positioning (Abdel-Rahman et al., 2003). In
cluttered workspace like nuclear reactor zones, almost zero pendulation or swing of the
load is expected during travelling stage and at load destination by imposing stiffed
conditions on swing suppression.

Inertia forces due to prescribed motion of the payload and excitation of the base as a result
of motions in the supporting mechanism of the crane could result in these unwanted
motions of the crane. An earlier technique employed by crane operators was to perform
load maneuvering slowly or stop the operation in order to dampen out motion of the
payload when such occurred. Such operations introduced time delay, reduced crane
efficiency and increased operating cost hence the need for automatic control (Abdel-
Rahman et al., 2003). In the process of designing controller for a crane system, almost all
the design decisions use to be a trade-off between having the load transported as fast as
possible or having a safe (i.e. less load swing) transportation (Pauluk, 2016). Several
conceptual and constructive control methods had been applied in the stabilization and
adaptive control of nonlinear systems such as the crane, and most of these methods rely on
application of energy (Lyapunov) function to the construction of the control law or in
close loop analysis of the system (Astolfi & Ortega, 2003).

The Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is a robust nonlinear control technique due to its
insensitivity to system uncertainty that has been applied for the stabilization of Gantry
Crane System (GCS). This work employ the Smell Agent Optimization (SAO) technique
to tune the gains of the SMC in order to have a better performance of the GCS when
compared with the conventional tuning.

2
1.2 Statement of the Problem

Load swing is a common problem during crane operation, and this may lead to
instability and poor load positioning.

Several control techniques among which include Input shapers, Command smoothing,
Filter, PID, LQR, State feedback Controller, Fuzzy Logic, Neural Network, the time-
optimal classical control, hybrid fuzzy-PID, Adaptive Control, SMC had been applied for
crane stabilization.

Nevertheless, the presence of external disturbances and uncertainty during crane operation
limits the efficiency of these methods thus making it difficult to achieved stabilization and
set-point tracking in the gantry crane system. However, good control of disturbances can
allow for compensation of these negative effects, thereby enhancing the robustness of the
system when subjected to disturbance. The SMC technique is a robust nonlinear controller
which had been applied for stabilization and position control of GCS. This research
proposes the use of smell agent optimization technique (SAO) to tune the gains of the
SMC to have a better performance of the GCS when compared with the conventional
tuning. The controller, if developed and applied on the system will guarantee stability and
robustness against uncertainty because it had proved to be a promising tool in nonlinear
systems stabilization.

1.3 Aim and Objectives of the Research

The aim of this research is to develop a sliding mode controller augmented with
SAO Scheme for stabilization and tracking of load position coordinates in the gantry crane
system.

The followings are the objectives of the research:

i) To develop the Simulink model of the GCS in MATLAB/Simulink based on the

mathematical model reported in the work of (Hussein et al., 2020) to be used for
simulation and controller development throughout the studies.

ii) To develop the sliding mode controller (SMC) for stabilization and tracking of the
position of the load of the developed GCS model in (i) and to optimize the gains
parameters of the developed controller based on (SAO).
3
iii) To compare the GCS performance using the developed SMC with and without the
SAO scheme under different external disturbance levels.

1.4 Significance of the Research

Load swing and inaccurate load positioning that are caused by mass inertia of the
load, base vibration of the supporting mechanism of the crane, frictional force of the
cartwheel and coupling between cart displacement and load swing, are major problems in
the application of the GCS for load transportation.

It is therefore important that these issues are properly addressed to ensure reduction in
payload swing and achieve precise load positioning leading to enhanced system stability,
improved efficiency and productivity.

Due to the nonlinear nature of the GCS, a nonlinear controller which guarantees stability
and robustness against uncertainty based on the concept of optimized SMC using smell
agent optimization technique (SAO) is presented.

1.5 Scope of the Research

Several aspects relating to Gantry Crane Systems have been studied. These include
modeling of the geometric structure and the structural behavior of the Gantry crane. In this
work emphasis will be on the dynamic behavior of the Gantry crane payload. The swing
motion of a payload suspended from the Gantry will be analyzed. An optimized SMC will
also be designed to mitigate swing oscillation by using intelligent technique called Smell
Agent Optimization (SAO).

4
 CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Introduction

This section comprises of two parts, review of fundamentals concept and review of
similar works. In review of fundamental concepts most of the fundamental theories of all
the control techniques are reviewed, after which similar works with respect to the system
and control methods are reviewed.

2.2 Crane

Crane system is use in transporting and lifting large and heavy loads such as
container, raw materials, or blocks in construction sites, manufacturing and transportation
industries, laboratory from one point within or around to the desired destination
(Abdullahi et al., 2018; Naskar & Pal, 2017).The use of crane lead to reduction in manual
labor application, improved efficiency, and in general improved productivity of the system
(Kang et al., 2017). The crane comprises of several parts that include a hoisting
mechanism, and support mechanism which are all mounted on the frame of the crane. The
hoisting mechanism is commonly made up of hoisting line and hook that were suspended
on the support mechanism which is made up of a trolley moving on a rail or girder (Abdel-
Rahman et al., 2003). During the transportation process, the suspension mechanism is
moved from one point to another within the workspace or environment.

2.2.1 Types of cranes

There are many types of cranes, which depends on their application: automatic
crane, cab-operated crane, cantilever gantry crane, floor-operated crane, gantry crane, jib
crane, mobile crane, overhead traveling crane, power-operated crane, pulpit-operated
crane, remote-operated crane, semi gantry crane, wall-mounted crane, and wall-mounted
jib crane. For this study, control analysis will be focused on gantry.

In our modern world, the need to move load, such as equipment, tools etc. from one place
to another, be it far or near, has become very crucial. The load to be moved is usually

5
heavy, large, and hazardous, which cannot be handled manually by workers. For instance,
shipyard and heavy workshop depends on crane to move materials or equipment from one
point to another. There are many types of crane that have been used for these purposes,
such as tower crane, overhead crane, boom crane, gantry crane and others.

The degree of freedom offered by the support mechanism to the suspension mechanism is
used as a basis for classifying cranes.

1. Gantry crane: It is also known as overhead crane. In this type of crane, the support
mechanism consists of girder or rail on which the trolley moves, and in some gantry
cranes, this rail is mounted on another rail that is horizontally placed on the previous rail.
The multiple rails enabled the trolley to have more horizontal movements (Abdel-Rahman
et al., 2003).

2. Rotary (Tower) Crane; rotary crane permits two patterns movement of the suspension
point in horizontal plane. This two patterns motion is possibly achieved by having
horizontal rotational movement of the rail (called jib in this type of crane) about a fixed
vertical axis. The motion patterns are translation and rotational motions (Abdel-Rahman et
al., 2003)

3. Boom Crane: This is another type of crane used for loads transportation. There is
absence of rail in this type of crane because, the suspension point is fixed at the end of the
boom. Rotations around the two orthogonal axes that are at the base of the boom result in
two motion patterns. The compression ability of the boom to support load during operation
is what makes the Boom crane have structural advantage over the other two cranes
(Abdel-Rahman et al., 2003). This crane, when compared to the other two, has compact
structure and is suitable for mobile cranes. Boom cranes are usually mounted on a mobile
structure such as trucks or ships for cargo transport of offshore constructions.

6
(a) Gantry Crane (b)Rotary Crane (c)Boom Crane

Figure 2.1 : Different Types of Crane (Ramli et al., 2017a)

The crane with most acceptance in the transport, mining, and assembling lines is the
gantry crane while for construction industries, rotary cranes are mostly employed (Abdel-
Rahman et al., 2003).

2.2.2 Gantry crane

Gantry Crane is a type of overhead crane with a single or double girder

configuration supported by freestanding legs that move on wheels or along track or rail
system.

Gantry cranes are usually considered when there is a reason not to incorporate an overhead
runway system.

2.2.3 Modeling of gantry crane system

Many researchers have conducted research on modeling the dynamics of the crane,
some of which used Lagrange equation, Newton’s second law of motion or Udwadia and
Kalaba motion equation (Kang et al,, 2017), using physical laws and theories relating to
the motion of the various parts that make up the system.

Basically the modeling of the crane system have two widely used approaches namely:
Distributed-mass and lumped-mass models (Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

1.Distributed-mass model: the payload and hook are lumped as point mass, while the
hoisting line is modeled as a distributed-mass, and are all used as boundary condition to
the distributed-mass system (Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

7
Distributed-mass model can be found in the work of (D'Andréa-Novel et al,, 1992;
d'Andréa-Novel et al,, 1994) and that of (d’Andrea-Novel et al,, 1991) (that is linearized
around the cable equilibrium point). This model does not consider payload inertia and
hoisting cable as inextensible and perfectly flexible material using the wave equation
(2.1).

 2 w   w 
   0
t 2 s  s 
(2.1)

Where; w  s, t  represent transverse motion of the cable around it equilibrium point, s

represent the curvilinear coordinates on the arc length along the cable,  is the mass per
unit length of the cable,  is the tension in the cable at the equilibrium.

  s   mg  s  g
(2.2)

Where m is the mass of the payload and the boundary conditions are;

 2 w w
M 2  F
t s at s  0 (2.3)

w
0 at s  l (2.4)
s

The trolley mass is represented by M and input force applied to the trolley by F. The
motion of the payload is subjected to the constraint given in equation (2.5) by the
boundary condition given by equation (2.4),

2w
0 at s  l (2.5)
t 2

This model developed by d’Andrea-Novel and his co-workers was later improved to
include inertia of the payload by (Chang and Chiang, 2008; Joshi and Rahn, 1995;

8
Martindale et al,, 1995; Rahn et al,, 1999). This is achieved by replacing the boundary
condition at the payload to:

 2 w w
m 2  0
t s at s  l (2.6)

This model of the gantry crane is valid only if the magnitude of the lumped mass m have
the same order with that of mass of the cable, and for little displacement of the trolley and
load swing. This implies that the model is valid only close to end of the travelled distance.
The mass of the hook is of weight greater than the mass of the cable under no-load
condition which rendered the model of limited practical application (Abdel-Rahman et al,,
2003).

2. Lumped-mass model: The lumped-mass model is the most acceptable crane model used
by researchers (renuka, 2013). In this approach, payload and the hook are lumped together
and modeled as point mass while the hoisting cable is considered as massless cable
(Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

The entire structure of cable-hook-payload is a spherical pendulum. This model that

captured complex dynamics of the payload motion is represented by a mathematical model
that is simple and compact (Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

Lumped-mass model is classified into two classes namely, Reduced and Extended models
based on the way the external inputs comes into the system.

i. In the reduced model, an expression representing the motion of the pendulum suspension
point is obtained by lumping all external excitation.

Pay load motion is assumed to be influence by the inertia coordinates of the suspension
point which are known functions of time that have very little influence on the platform
motion (Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

ii. Crane support mechanism and the platform mechanism are added to the dynamic model
in the extended lumped-mass approach for modeling the crane system.

9
By so doing, the interactions among support mechanism, cable-payload assembly and the
platform mechanism is incorporated into the model (Abdel-Rahman et al,, 2003).

In general, special cases of the same classical models of spherical pendulum that are
influence by base excitations are used to form reduced models of the crane (Abdel-
Rahman et al,, 2003).

2.3 Sliding Mode Controller (SMC)

Sliding Mode Control is a robust nonlinear control scheme due to its insensitivity
to system uncertainty. SMC offers a promising control scheme for rejecting the
uncertainties of the systems. Systems with sliding mode have proven to be an efficient tool
to control complex high-order nonlinear dynamic plants operating under uncertainty
(Khan, 2003).

2.3.1 Advantages of using sliding mode controller

There are two major advantages of sliding mode control.

1. The dynamic behavior of the system may be tailored by the choice of sliding function.

2. The closed loop response becomes totally unresponsive to some uncertainties such as
disturbance, modeling errors, parameter variation etc (Pimpale, 2018)

2.3.2. Disadvantages of sliding mode controller

The main disadvantage of SMC is chattering problem due to high frequency

switching over discontinuity of the control signal.(khan, 2003)

2.3.3. Design of SMC

The design of a sliding mode controller consists of three main steps:

1. Design of a sliding surface.

2. Selection of the control law, which holds the system trajectory on the sliding surface.

3. Key step is the chattering free implementation. (Pimpale, 2018).

10
2.3.3.1 Design of Sliding Surface

Sliding mode control is a type of variable structure control system, which is

characterized by a discontinuous feedback control structure. It switches as the system
crosses certain manifold in the state space to force the system state to reach, and
subsequently to remain on a specified surface within the state space called sliding surface.
The multiple control structures are designed so that trajectories always move toward an
adjacent region with a different control structure, and so the ultimate trajectory will not
exist entirely within one control structure. Instead, it will slide along the boundaries of the
control structures. The motion of the system as it slides along these boundaries is called a
sliding mode and the geometrical locus consisting of the boundaries is called the sliding
surface. The system is said to be in sliding motion when σ = S𝓍 = 0. During sliding, the
motion of the system in its state space is restricted to the surface defined by σ = 0, so the
system demonstrates the behavior of a linear system characterized by the selection of S.
This design is called the sliding surface design. Throughout the sliding motion the system
is supposed to show desired dynamics. This is achieved by the appropriate design of the
sliding surface that is through surface design. For linear systems, the sliding surface design
determines the eigenvalues of the system during sliding motion. (Pimpale, 2018)

2.3.3.2. Selection of Control Law

The control law is chosen to enforce a sliding mode. First, a control law u is
selected for justify the sliding condition. Also, for the review of the presence of modeling
exactness and disturbances, the control law has to be discontinuous across S(t). The
motivation for choosing these control laws is their varying combinations of behavior for
both small and large values of S. (Pimpale, 2018).

2.3.3.3 Chattering effect

In the implementation of sliding mode control theory in real systems, the main
obstacle is an undesirable phenomenon of oscillation with finite frequency and amplitude,
which is known as chattering. The chattering is harmful because it leads to low control
accuracy, high wear of moving mechanical parts, and high heat losses in electrical power
circuits. Two main causes have been identified, First, is fast dynamics in the control loop,
which were neglected in the system model, are often excited by the fast switching of
sliding mode controllers. Second, is digital implementations in microcontrollers.

11
In theory, the trajectories slide along the switching function. In practice, there is high
frequency switching. A high-frequency motion called chattering, so that no ideal sliding
mode can occur in practice. Yet, solutions have been developed to reduce the chattering
and so that the trajectories remain in a small neighborhood (boundary) of the surface
called as chattering because of the sound made by old mechanical switches.

2.4 An Overview of Position Controllers

In general, crane presents a control problem where the undamped swinging of the
load has led earlier researchers to apply a cumbersome control technique. Crane control is
a well-studied problem. Several papers and thesis have been written on the subject. The
next sections will describe the major contributions in this field. The previously used
techniques can mainly be divided into the open loop and closed loop techniques. These
techniques for both gantry and tower cranes will be reviewed and discussed accordingly.

2.4.1 Open-loop techniques

This technique is a type of continuous control system in which the output does not
affect the control action of the input signal. Thus, it does not inform the output condition
of the system. This technique has been used widely in crane system by many researchers
because it is easy to implement. However, the disadvantage of this technique is sensitive
to external disturbance, such as wind or ocean waves (Omar, 2003). Input shaping is one
of the open-loop techniques. Input shaping is a command shaping method that has been
used to limit the crane load oscillation. A series of impulses is convolved in real-time with
the original reference command to create a shaped command.

In their research, (Singhose et al., 2000) studied the effects of hoisting on the input
shaping method control of gantry crane. Several types of input shaping are evaluated and
compared with time-optimal rigid-body commands over a wide range of parameters. Input
shaping provides significant reduction in both the residual and the transient oscillations,
even when the hoisting distance is a large percentage of the cable length. But Input
shaping does not yield exactly zero residual vibration except when the hoist distance is
small.

12
Also (Park et al., 2000) used input shaping technique to control the container crane
system. Time-efficient feedforward controls of input shaping are proposed for reducing
the residual vibrations.

However, the proposed approach does not yield exactly zero residual vibration. Another
major drawback of the approach is that it only approximate solutions not exact in
optimization procedure.

In their work (Huh and Hong, 2002) have investigated a modified input shaping control to
suppress the residual swing angle in container crane. The conventional input shapers are
enhanced by adding one more constraint to limit the sway angle of the load. The major
problem of the proposed method is that travelling time of the crane system was increased.

Another paper by (Masoud and Daqaq, 2006) investigated a new approach of input
shaping technique in container crane. The new approach was based on the graphical
representation of the phase portrait that describes the response of a container crane
payload to a double-step acceleration profile. In contrast with single-step shaped
acceleration profiles which are very sensitive to the frequency approximations, the
proposed double-step profile is less sensitive to small variations in the frequency.
However, the proposed approach is only effective for small length variation and also there
is transient and residual oscillation at the out

(Ho et al., 2014) investigated three input shaping control schemes of an overhead crane,
which are zero vibration(ZV), zero vibration derivative(ZVD) and zero vibration
derivative-derivative(ZVDD) are applied to reduce sway motions of the load. It is assumed
that the trolley of the crane moves along X-axis only. The tower crane is unlike a gantry
crane because of the tower rotation movement, which is a result of nonlinearity behavior.
The input shaping control scheme shows two advantages, sensorless and significant
effectiveness to linear system, it has been a promising method to suppress the sway
motions of crane systems. However, the ZV, ZVD & ZVDD input shapes controllers are
unable to eliminate disturbances effectively.

(Samin et al., 2013b) proposed a Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) control scheme and
then extended to an input shaping technique to reduce the swing angle of the load of three
degree-of-freedom rotary crane. Positive and modified specified negative amplitude input
shapers with the derivative effects are designed based on the properties of the system.

13
It has been assumed that one swing angle which perpendicular to the jib and applies the
technique to reduce the swing of it. However, significant amount of sway occurs at the
hosting angle of the payload during the movement of the arm.

In their paper, Alhassan et al., 2018) presented an input shaping technique and shows the
performance for sway control of the rotary crane. They used zero vibration (ZV), zero
vibration derivative(ZVD), zero vibration derivative-derivative(ZVDD) and zero vibration
derivative-derivative-derivative(ZVDDD) and made a comparison between them. The
performance of the shapers demonstrated that ZVDDD provide higher sway reduction and
robustness compared to ZVDD, ZVD and ZV. But ZVDDD has the slowest response as
compared to the other shapers due to the additional number of delays.

To conclude, open-loop techniques have been used by many researchers in case of crane
system as it is potentially cheap. However, it is inadequate due to variations or
disturbances and may become ineffectual to these systems.

2.4.2 Closed-loop techniques

The goal of any control system is to measure, monitor and control the system into
specific requirements. A closed-loop control system is also known as a feedback control
system. This technique uses feedback to maintain the demanded output condition by
comparing it with the actual condition. The difference between output and reference input
is called “error signal” which returns and compares with demand reference to achieve the
demanded action. This technique is commonly used to control the crane system. There are
several types of these techniques which can be divided into a linear control technique
(such as proportional integrator derivative PID, Linear quadratic regulator LQR), an
intelligent control (fuzzy logic control, neural network), sliding mode control, an optimal
control (such as Model predictive control MPC, linear quadratic Gaussian LQG), an
adaptive control, and other control techniques. In this section, a brief review of each
technique that has been used in the crane system will be demonstrated.

2.4.2.1. Linear control technique (PID & LQR)

One of the linear techniques is proportional integrator derivative PID which is

applied to control the cranes.

14
(Wahyudi, 2007) have designed a sensorless control of the overhead crane. Also, classical
PID controllers were designed to evaluate the proposed technique.

A PID controller is adopted to control the trolley position while PD controller has been
used for anti-swing control.The results show that the proposed sensorless anti-swing
control strategy is effective for suppressing the swing motion and also has robustness to
deal with parameter variations. However, there is need for further studies to evaluate the
soft sensor robustness to larger parameter variation since the experiment was done using
lab-scale gantry prototype in laboratory under ideal conditions.

(Solihin et al., 2008) proposed a method for tuning PID controller of automatic gantry
crane control using particle swarm optimization (PSO). This method applied to find the
optimal PID gains of the system.The work presents in detail how to apply PSO method in
finding the optimal PID gains of gantry crane system in the fashion of min-max
optimization. It was shown by simulation that the controller works effectively to drive
nonlinear plant. There is a need to improve the swing response of the controller for the
longest cable length in order to develop a more robust system.

Another research team (Diep and Khoa, 2014) designed three controllers for anti-swing,
rope length and position control of a gantry crane. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) was
used to obtain the parameters tuning. The controllers of the system consist of a PID
controller for position control of trolley, PI controller for length control of hoist rope and
PD for anti-swing control. The simulation results have shown that the controllers are
effective to move the trolley and length of the rope as fast as possible to the desired
position and length with low payload oscillation. However, the simulation results for a
higher payload require more little time to settle down.

(Hussien et al., 2015) have used PID and PD controllers to control a gantry crane. A
combination of the Priority Fitness Scheme and Particle Swarm Optimization (PFPSO) is
used to optimize the parameters of PID and PD controller.The system responses have been
examined.The controller is able to move the trolley to a desired position with the minimize
payload oscillation and reject the disturbance that occurred in the system. But the
controller needs more time to eliminate the disturbances. Hence, there is a need to improve
the controller to reduce the settling time.

15
(Santhi and LB, 2014) employed a linear quadratic regulator for controlling the trolley
position and swing motion which gives better performance than simple PD and PID
control. For the tower crane, various attempts of using linear control were conducted to
control the position and the swing angle of the load. Both the transient and steady state
response of the system is improved with LQR controller compared to simple PD and PID.

The robustness of the controller is not tested. There is a need for improvement on the
controller robustness to take care of the variation of parameters and external disturbances.

(Renuka and Mathew 2013) analyzed the performance of proportional-integral-differential

(PID) controller on different models of crane system. Two-dimensional (2D) and three-
dimensional (3D) models were considered with inclusion of cable hoisting, frictional force
and wind disturbance dynamics. Simulation and analysis were done on the system and it
was observed that the system controller performed well but with presence of oscillation in
the swing angle, trolley displacement and cable hoisting. However, it was found out that
there is compromise between having a precise load positioning control and reduction in
load swing, hence the need for an improvement on the controller in order to guarantee
both precision positioning and load swing reduction.

2.4.2.2 Adaptive control technique

Adaptive control techniques have been used by many researchers to control cranes.
Based on the nonlinear model of the crane, adaptive control has the capability of
estimating the parameter uncertainties and the external disturbances of the system.

(Nguyen and Kim, 2015) have developed a nonlinear adaptive control of a 3D overhead
crane, the nonlinear control scheme employs adaptation laws that estimate unknown
system parameters, friction forces and the mass of the load. The estimated values are used
to compute control forces applied to the trolley of the crane. Experiment and simulation
results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller. The controller only uses the
estimates value of the unknown payload and damping coefficient. There is a need to
improve on the controller to use true values of the parameters.

In case of tower crane, (Sun et al., 2016a) proposed an adaptive control scheme for
underactuated tower cranes to achieve simultaneous slew/translation positioning and
swing suppression which was the first work for a tower crane.

16
It presents the first closed-loop control that can achieve control for an under actuated
double pendulum crane with merely output feedback and theoretically guaranteed
saturated control effort. Hardware experiment results demonstrate the superior
performance of the proposed approach over existing methods, and it is robustness as well.

However, the dynamic equation of a double-pendulum crane is much more complicated

than its corresponding single-pendulum version, more sophisticated controller is required.

2.4.2.3 Sliding mode control technique

Many researchers have used this technique due to its capability to reject the
uncertainties and the nonlinearities of the system. The matched uncertainties and
disturbances, which lie in the range space of the input signals, can be easily handled by
SMC with fixed sliding surface while unmatched disturbances require SMC with a
dynamic sliding surface. It has been found that the sliding mode control technique was
adopted with other techniques such as fuzzy control.

(Chwa 2017) proposed a nonlinear anti-swing controller based on SMC. The work
considered a 3D model of the crane system that includes movement of the trolley, girder,
and payload swing. The SMC controller was able to reduce the payload swing and track
the desired position of the load, but there is still present of oscillation even after a
particular duration of time and chattering of the control signal. The work reported that, the
chattering in the control signal can be taken care of but at the expense of robustness of the
controller, hence the need for an improvement on the nonlinear robust controller that will
guarantee fast swing reduction and improve productivity of the system.

(Hussein et al., 2020) proposed a sliding mode control (SMC) for the stabilization of
overhead cranes system structures for lifting and conveying weighty loads. The
asymptotical stability of the system was carried out using Lyapunov functions. For
validation of the proposed controller, a comparative study with LQR (Linear Quadratic
Regulator) results show that both the controllers give satisfactory performance, but the
SMC provides better overall performance. The proposed sliding mode control approach
for overhead cranes system has shown to be more effective, robust and realistic than a
LQR controller, and to be able to move cargo safely to a destination even in harsh
environment. Despite, the performance of SMC over LQR, there is still present of
oscillation at the output of the system, and it is valid for small operation range,

17
hence the need to optimize the controller gains to improve on the controller in order to
guarantee stability even with wide operation time.

(Nguyen et al, 2017) proposed adaptive sliding mode controller (SMC) based on radial
basis function (RBF) network for overhead crane. The SMC is used to suppress load
swinging and achieve load positioning precision. The RBF network is used to compensate
for the uncertain nonlinear function contained in the SMC control law. In order to have a
stable control, an adaptive tuning algorithm was added to tune gain parameters of the
classical SMC.

Results of the proposed control system was compared to that of classical SMC technique
and the proposed work outperformed the classical controller in terms of parametric
variation and robustness to disturbance but with the present of oscillation. Residual
oscillations of the payload make it an open area for further research to obtain a controller
that will further suppress the swinging of the load. However, the research focused on load
swinging suppression rather than stabilization and tracking.

2.4.2.4 Optimal control technique (MPC & LQG)

Optimal control is to deal with the process of determining control and state
trajectories for a dynamic system during a period to reduce the performance index.

In another term, it is a set of differential equations which describe the path of control
variable to minimize the cost function. Numerous amount of research have been carried
out by using this technique to control the crane system.

In their work, (Wu et al., 2015) have applied a model predictive control (MPC) to an
overhead crane. It has been used to minimize an objective function that is formulated as
the integration of energy consumption and swing angle. This technique utilised the
information of current displacement, velocity, and swing angle for predicting the
following control sequence (acceleration or force). From the numerical results obtained, it
has been shown that MPC approach is stable and robust to find the closed-optimal
solutions when disturbances exist. However, MPC has closed-loop stability problem
which causes its performance to deteriorate with time.

18
2.4.2.5 Intelligent control technique

Intelligent control techniques have been used to control the crane system, which
can be divided into neural network control and fuzzy logic control.

Neural network control involves two steps which are system identification and control. It
involves a network of simple processing elements (artificial neurons) which can exhibit
complex global behaviour, determined by the connections between the processing
elements and element parameters.

Some researchers used this technique to control the crane system, such as (Abe, 2011),
which presented the use of a neural network to control the swing of an overhead crane.
Radial basis function networks (RBFNs) were employed to generate the desired trolley
position.

Thus, particle swarm optimization was used as a learning algorithm in which a maximum
swing angle after positioning is adopted as the objective function to be optimized. In all
simulation and experimental results, we confirmed that the residual sway perfectly
suppressed using the proposed approach. However, the base velocity and acceleration can
not be measured directly in the experiment, they can only be obtained from the numerical
derivative of the the measured position. The velocity and acceleration data obtained under
this condition contains a large amount of noise that is due to resolution of the linear
encoder.

(Tinkir et al., 2011) proposed a hierarchical artificial neural network-based adaptive fuzzy
logic (HNNFL) control of flexible link carrying pendulum system which was assumed as
scaled a tower crane system. The proposed controller has two subsystem controllers such
as fast and slow artificial neural-network-based fuzzy logic controllers which were sorted
according to their importance in the control scheme. The proposed controller guaranteed
that the flexible link can be driven to a desired position with reduced pendulum sway.
Experimental and simulation results demonstrated the proposed control method minimizes
pendulum swing even when the flexible link is rotating rapidly.

Also (Duong et al., 2012) have proposed a recurrent neural network(RNN) and developed
by the evolutionary algorithm which uses the operators of a constricted particle swarm
optimization(PSO) and a binary-coded genetic algorithm(GA). This technique was applied

19
to the three-dimensional tower crane system. Simulation results show that the proposed
Hybrid evolutionary algorithm (HEA) has superior performance in comparison with the
canonical algorithms and that the control system works effectively.

However, Hybrid evolutionary Algorithms (HEAs) have involved the problems of

mathematical modeling and optimization.

(Matuško et al., 2015) proposed a control scheme for 3D tower crane which consisted of a
tensor product model transformation based nonlinear feedback controller, with additional
neural network-based friction compensator. Neural network parameters adaptation law is
derived using Lyapunov stability analysis. Fuzzy logic control has been used to control
many different systems.The stability of the overall control system is guaranteed using
Lyapunov stability theory. However, the quality of the model-based friction compensation
largely depends on the accuracy of the underlying friction model.

The approach is extended by adding Neural Network as Adaptive Friction Compensator to

compensate the friction effect and eliminate steady state error which increases the
complexity of the obtained model.

Furthering research in the field, (Almutairi and Zribi, 2016) have presented two fuzzy
controllers to control the position of the cart of a gantry crane and suppressing the swing
angle of the payload. A dual PD fuzzy controller was proposed. Two fuzzy logic
controllers have been designed. The first fuzzy was designed to tune the gains of the first
PD controller, which is used for regulating the position of the cart. The second fuzzy
system was used to tune the gains of the second PD controller, which is used for
suppressing the swing of the payload during the movement of the crane.The simulation
and experimental results indicate that the proposed fuzzy controllers are robust against
output disturbances and uncertainty of the parameters of the crane. However, the research
focused on payload swinging suppression rather than stabilization.

(Liu et al, 2018) developed a modified fuzzy-PID controller for minimization of harsh sea
conditions on salvage crane.Wave compensator algorithm which is an improved version of
the traditional fuzzy-PID algorithm due to modification of the fuzzy aspects (rules, inputs
and output). The E and EC rules are used simultaneously to update the PID parameters and
these rules were reduced from the usual 49 rules to 14 rules, fewer reasoning items were
obtained in order to have less reasoning time and fast controller response.This result in

20
better performance of the system with the improved fuzzy-PID controller when compared
to the traditional fuzzy-PID in terms of disturbance rejection and system stability.

Thus, the controller did better when compared to the existing ones in literatures but there
is still need to improve on the controller in order to takes into account system states for
better stabilization and improved efficiency.

(Naskar and Pal 2017) proposed a self-tuning fuzzy-proportional-differential (PD)

controller for payload swing reduction and precise load positioning in crane system. The
fuzzy logic algorithm is used to tune the parameters of the PD controller. In order to
achieve the tuning task, a type-1 fuzzy logic is use to tune type-2 fuzzy logic that formed
the self-tuning fuzzy logic. This control technique proved to be successful in reducing
payload swing and achieving load positioning at the desired position when compared to
the existing conventional methods (T1FLPDC, T2FLPDC and T1STFLDDC).

This method gave improved result with regards to swing reduction and load position, but
there is no standard tool for tuning the type-2 fuzzy logic, hence the need for a standard
control-optimization technique.

Meanwhile, Qian et al., 2016) developed a single input rule model-based fuzzy controller
for control of the double-pendulum-type overhead crane. The controller includes six single
input rule models that are dynamically weighted. The genetic algorithm was adopted to
tune some parameters of the controller. The implementation of fuzzy logic control also
attracted researchers to apply it in rotatory/tower crane systems. Some numerical
simulation results are presented to show the performance and effectiveness of “Single-
Input-Rule Modules”(SIRMs) based fuzzy controller for transport control of double-
pendulum-type system. However, for large-scale industrial cranes, their hook and payload
angles and velocities are hard to measure.

Other research from (Al-Mousa, 2000, Al-Mousa et al., 2003) used fuzzy logic control
which was applied to the rotary crane. The fuzzy logic controller was proposed first with
the idea of split horizon. It used some fuzzy engines for tracking position and others for
damping load swing. Each of these controllers has two fuzzy inference engines. Two input
signals were used, which are the desired position of the trolley and rotational angle of the
jib. The controller also receives four other inputs from feedback which are the actual
position of the trolley, actual rotational angle of the jib, and two angles of the payload.

21
The results from simulations show that the fuzzy controller is capable of keeping the load-
oscillation angles small throughout the maneuvers in relatively times. However, the
controller damps the initial kicks in the “in-plane” and “out-of-plane” angles quickly
which makes trolley to takes little more time before reaching its final destination.

(Sadati and Hooshmand, 2006) proposed an anti-swing controller by using fuzzy

clustering technique. An automated procedure by using fuzzy clustering for the
determination of the number of operating points and their locations and also provide
interpolation mechanism using membership functions for the local controller parameters.
However, external disturbances such as noise and wind is not considered in the design of
the controller.

(Wu et al., 2016) have proposed H infinity based adaptive fuzzy control technique to
control the swing motion of tower crane with external disturbances and multiple time-
delays. The control law was based on a variable structure adaptive fuzzy scheme. The
proposed control scheme is based on Lyapunov stability to suppress the influence of the
external disturbances and eliminate fuzzy approximation errors. Despite, the performance
of the controller in payload swing reduction and suppressing the influence of external
disturbances, there is still present of oscillation at the output of the system. Hence, there is
need to optimize the controller gain.

(Zhang et al., 2017) proposed an error tracking control method for overhead crane systems
for which the error trajectories for the trolley and the payload swing can be pre-specified.
Lyapunov techniques and LaSalle's invariance theorem are utilized to prove the
convergence and stability of the closed-loop system. The proposed method shows strong
robustness against parameter variation and external disturbances. However, the research
focused on error tracking rather than payload oscillation anti-swing control and
stabilization.

22
2.5 Conclusion

In conclusion, from the literature reviews that has been carried out on the crane
control system, the performance of most of the linear and nonlinear controllers deteriorate
with increase in operating range, uncertainty and external disturbance.

Hence, there is need to design an optimized robust controller that can handle uncertainty
and external disturbances during crane operation.

This research presents the development of an optimized SMC for the stabilization of
overhead crane system to address this problem of uncertainty and disturbance. It is
expected that increased efficiency of the crane control system would be improved on the
application of intelligent optimization technique.

23
 CHAPTER THREE

MATERIALS AND METHODS

3.1 Introduction

This chapter presents the materials used and the detailed description of the
methods followed to develop a sliding mode controller augmented with SAO Scheme for
stabilization in the gantry crane system (GCS).

3.2 Materials

In this section, the materials used for the implementation of this research are
presented. These materials involve the computer Hardware and the software used for the
implementation.

3.2.1 Computer system

HP desktop computer situated at Control laboratory, department of

Electrical/Electronic Engineering Technology, Federal Polytechnic, Bali, Taraba-Nigeria
was used for all simulations carried out in this research. Table 3.1 showed the computer
system specifications.

Table 3. 1: Specification of Computer System

S/N Items Specification

1. Type of Computer System 64-bit operating system

2. Operating System Windows 10 Pro

3. Installed memory (RAM) 6.00GB

4. Processor Intel(R)Core(TM) i5 CPU @ 3.50GHz

22
3.2.2 MATLAB/Simulink R2019b

There are several versions of Matrix Laboratory (MATLAB) that are available for
use to the public.

For this research, MATLAB/ Simulink R2019b version available in the Control laboratory
of department of Electrical Engineering, Federal Polytechnic Bali, Taraba State was used
to carry out all simulation work.

3.3 Methods

The methods used in actualizing this research are explained in detail under the
following subheadings:

3.3.1 Development of Mathematical model of GCS dynamics

Y Trolley
U1
U2
X
x
L

0
m
Load
Figure 3. 1: Model of a Gantry Set-up (Naskar and Pal, 2017)

The set-up of a gantry crane is given in Figure 3.1, where x is the displacement of the
trolley, θ is the angular displacement of the payload from the vertical position,
𝑈1 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑈2 is the control inputs, L is the length of the hoisting cable, m is mass of the
payload, M is mass of the trolley, and g is acceleration due to gravity acting on the
payload.

23
The dynamic model of overhead crane system can be acquired using the Euler-Lagrange
approach given below. (Hussein et al., 2020)

1 𝑑𝑥 2
Kinetic energy of the trolley (T1) = 2M( 𝑑𝑡 ) (3.1)

Kinetic energy of the payload

1 𝑑𝑥 2 𝑑𝜃 2 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝜃
(T2) = 2m[( 𝑑𝑡 ) + 𝐿2 ( 𝑑𝑡 ) + 2 ( 𝑑𝑡 ) (𝑑𝑥 ) L 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃] (3.2)

𝑇𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝐾𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑐 𝑒𝑛𝑒𝑟𝑔𝑦(𝑇) = 𝑇1 + 𝑇2 (3.3)

Total Potential energy (P) = -mgL𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 (3.4)

𝑑 𝜕𝐿 𝜕𝐿
Using Lagrange’s Equation, 𝑑𝑡 (𝜕𝓆) - 𝜕𝓆 = Q (3.5)

𝐿 =𝑇−𝑃 (3.6)

1 𝑑𝑥 2 1 𝑑𝑥 2 𝑑𝜃 2 𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝜃
M( 𝑑𝑡 ) +2 m[( 𝑑𝑡 ) + 𝐿2 ( 𝑑𝑡 ) + 2 ( 𝑑𝑡 ) (𝑑𝑥 ) L 𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃] + 𝑚𝑔𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 =F (3.7)
2

Therefore, the non-linear model of GCS can summarized by resolving equation (3.7) into
two components, Fx= direction of trolley and FL= direction of the payload

𝑑2 𝑥 𝑑2 𝜃 𝑑𝜃 2
(𝑀 + 𝑚) + 𝑚𝐿𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃 − 𝑚𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 ( 𝑑𝑡 ) = 𝑈1 +𝑈2 (3.8)
𝑑𝑡 2 𝑑 𝑡2

𝑑2 𝑥 𝑑2 𝜃
𝑚𝐿𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃 𝑑𝑡 2 + 𝑚𝐿2 + 𝑚𝑔𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 = 0 (3.9)
𝑑𝑡 2

Where; M is mass of the cart in (Kg), m represent mass of the payload, L is length of the
hoisting (suspension) cable, g acceleration due to gravity, 𝑢 is the applied control force
or torque, x is displacement of the trolley or distance travelled by the trolley and  is the
swing angle of the payload.

Consequently, Equation(3.8) & (3.9) can be express in matrix form ;

24
 𝑀+𝑚 𝑚𝐿𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃 𝑥̈ 𝑚𝐿𝜃̇ 2 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 (𝑢 + 𝑢2 )
[ ] [ ] = [ ]+[ 1 ]
𝑚𝐿𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃 𝑚𝐿2 𝜃̈ −𝑚𝑔𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃 0
(3.10)

Equation (3.10) can be express as follows

𝐾11 𝐾12 𝑥̈ 𝑓 + (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 )

[ ] [ ̈] = [ 𝑎 ]
𝐾21 𝐾22 𝜃 𝑓𝑢
(3.11)

Where:𝐾11 = 𝑀 + 𝑚, 𝐾12 = 𝐾21 = 𝑚𝐿𝑐𝑜𝑠𝜃, 𝐾22 = 𝑚𝐿2 , 𝑓𝑢 = −𝑚𝑔𝐿𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃,

𝑓𝑎 = 𝑚𝐿𝜃̇ 2 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝜃

𝐾11 𝐾12
Let us defined K=[ ]
𝐾21 𝐾22

Then equation (3.10) can be transformed into:

𝑥̈ 𝑓 + (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 )
[ ̈ ] = 𝐾 −1 (𝜃) [ 𝑎 ]
𝜃 𝑓𝑢
(3.12)

The equation (3.12) can be transformed into the following equations (3.13) and (3.14)
below

𝐾22 𝑓𝑎 −𝐾12 𝑓𝑢 𝐾22

𝑥̈ = 𝐾 +𝐾 (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 ) (3.13)
11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21 11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21

−𝐾 𝑓𝑎 +𝐾11 𝑓𝑢 −𝐾21
𝜃̈ = 𝐾 21 +𝐾 (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 ) (3.14)
𝐾 −𝐾 𝐾
11 22 12 21 11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21

The equation (3.13) and (3.14) can be written as follows:

𝑥̈ = 𝑓11 + 𝑏11 (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 ) (3.15)

𝜃̈ = 𝑓12 + 𝑏12 (𝑢1 + 𝑢2 ) (3.16)

Where

𝐾22 𝑓𝑎 −𝐾12 𝑓𝑢 𝐾22

𝑓11 = 𝐾 , 𝑏11 = 𝐾
11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21 11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21

25
 −𝐾21 𝑓𝑎 +𝐾11 𝑓𝑢 −𝐾12
𝑓22 = 𝐾 , 𝑏12 = 𝐾
11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21 11 𝐾22 −𝐾12 𝐾21

3.3.2 Development of the Simulink model of the GCS based on the

mathematical model of GCS dynamics

The mathematical model of the GCS presented in equations (3.1) to (3.16) defined
was modeled in Simulink to obtain the GCS model {𝑥̇ =X1, 𝑥 =X2, 𝜃̇ =X3 and θ=X4}.
This model uses the front wheels for steering control and the back wheels for speed
control. The Simulink model of the GCS system is presented in Figure 3.2.

Figure 3. 2: Developed Nonlinear Simulink Model of GCS

26
The Simulink model of the nonlinear GCS in Figure 3.2 is made up of a subsystem block
use in obtaining the trigonometry functions, input port, and several output ports that
represents system outputs.

3.3.3 Development of a sliding mode controller (SMC) for stabilization

and tracking of the position of the load of the developed GCS model.

In this section, the control scheme is developed. It consists of dynamic control

design. The methodology is based on sliding mode control (SMC). Firstly, the system is
transformed into a special structure through input transformation, containing nominal part
plus some unknown term. The unknown term is computed adaptively. The control
problem is to find the control signal such that all the states of the system converge to zero.

Based on Lyapunov function, we are going to derive the dynamic control law in a series of
steps, as follows: (Hussein et al., 2020).

The sliding mode function can be defined as:

𝑆1 = 𝑥̇ + 𝑑1 𝑥 + 𝑘1 𝜃̇ + 𝑘2 𝜃 (3.17)

𝑆2 = 𝑥̇ + 𝑑3 𝑥 + 𝑘3 𝜃̇ + 𝑘4 𝜃 (3.18)

By differentiating equation (3.17) and (3.18) while substituting equations (3.15) and
(3.16)

𝑆1̇ = 𝑓11 + 𝑘1 𝑓12 + (𝑏11 + 𝑐2 𝑏22 )𝑢1 + 𝑑1 𝑥̇ + 𝑘2 𝜃 (3.19)

𝑆2̇ = 𝑓11 + 𝑘3 𝑓12 + (𝑏11 + 𝑐2 𝑏22 )𝑢2 + 𝑑3 𝑥̇ + 𝑘4 𝜃 (3.20)

The control law(U1+U2) can be express :

1
𝑈1 = − 𝑏 [𝑓11 + 𝑘1 𝑓12 + 𝑑1 𝑥̇ + 𝑘2 𝜃̇ + 𝜁𝑠𝑔𝑛(𝑆1 )] (3.21)
11+𝑐2 𝑏22

1
𝑈2 = − 𝑏 [𝑓11 + 𝑘3 𝑓12 + 𝑑3 𝑥̇ + 𝑘4 𝜃̇ + 𝜁𝑠𝑔𝑛(𝑆2 )] (3.22)
11+𝑐2 𝑏22

27
As seen in the equation (3.21) and (3.22), the controller gains parameters are 𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2
,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 .The gains parameters have a direct impact on the system control law
(U1+U2). The greater the values of 𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2 ,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 .the faster the system approached
the sliding surface. Hence, control law (U1+U2) depends on values of the gains
parameters, 𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2 ,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 .Therefore, there is need to employ an optimization
algorithm to search for the optimal value of 𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2 ,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 .

In this research, smell agent optimization technique will be adopted and the objective
function will be the root mean square error (RMSE) of the control input (U1+U2).

An SMC-SAO was developed for control of GCS. The Simulink model of the GCS was
developed first and then the optimize SMC-SAO scheme. The developed SAO-SMC
scheme is expected to control the position and swing angle of the GCS.

3.3.4 Development of the Simulink model of the SMC.

The sliding mode controller (SMC) was developed to minimize the trajectory
tracking error of the load swing angle generated by the GCS scheme. The SMC was
designed in Simulink using equation (3.17) to (3.22).

Figure 3.3 is the Simulink model of the SMC controller containing six(6) controller
parameters(𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2 ,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 ).Smell Agent Optimization Algorithm (SAO) was
designed to obtain the optimal parameters of the SMC controller. The objective function to
be optimized by this algorithm is based on computed respectively using controller
gains(𝑑1 , 𝑘1 ,𝑘2 ,𝑑3, 𝑘3 and 𝑘4 ).

28
Figure 3. 3: Simulink Model of SMC

3.3.5. Smell Agent Optimization Technique

The smell agent optimization (SAO) is a class of optimization technique inspired

by the phenomenon of smell (Salawudeen et al., 2018a). The optimization algorithm is
based on the random concentration of smell particles and detection capability of an agent.

29
It considers the Brownian motion of the smell molecules and the movement of the agent
towards this molecule. The SAO generates initial population (position) of smell molecules
and it then simulates the chemo-sensation process of organism (agent). Each smell
molecule represents a potential solution to the given problem. The SAO has three major
modes which are; sniffing mode, trailing mode and random mode (Salawudeen et al.,
2018b).

3.3.5.1. Sniffing Mode

This is the starting mode and the smell molecules evaporates from the smell source
towards the agent. The agent evaluates the concentration of the smell molecule and
follows the direction its coming from. This process is initiated by generating random
initial position of smell molecules The position of each smell molecule (potential solution)
is determined by the position vector and molecules velocity and is given as (Salawudeen et
al., 2018b):

X it 1  X it   Vi t 1 (3.22)

t 1
Where X i is the updated molecule position, X it is previous molecule position and

Vi t 1 is the updated velocity.

 t 1
The updated velocity Vi is given as:

3KT
Vi t 1  Vi t   r0  (3.23)
m

Where Vi t is current velocity, K is Boltzmann constant, T is temperature of smell

molecule and m is mass of molecule.

Therefore, equation (2.23) becomes:

 3KT  (3.24)
X it 1  X it    Vi t   r0  
 m 

30
Where r0 is a random number that penalizes the 3rd part of equation (3.24)

At the sniffing mode, the fitness of the update position of the smell molecules is evaluated
using equation (3.24). Hence, it is at this point that the agent X agent sniffs the molecules

with the best fitness and then updates its position based on the fittest.

3.3.5.2 Trailing mode

After a decision has been made in the sniffing mode, the agent begins to follow the
smell molecules to identify the source. The agent X agent only trails the molecules with the

highest concentration until the solution is found (smell source). This trailing behavior of
the agent is expressed as (Salawudeen et al., 2018b):


X it 1  X it   r1  olc  Xagent
t
 
 X it   r2  olc  Xworst
t
 X it   (3.25)

Where r1 and r2 are numbers generated randomly at various intervals. During trailing, r1

and r2 penalizes the influence of the olfaction capacity on parameter on the agents
position and on worst position of the smell molecules respectively. By so doing, the
movement of the agent is guided only within the position of the agent and that of worst
position of molecules.

3.3.5.3 Random mode

In a situation where the agent loss its trail due to the discrete nature of the
molecules, this situation may lead to entrapment of the agent in local minima and which
leads to the inability to continue trailing. In such scenarios, the agent goes into the random
mode. In this mode, the agent takes a step movement randomly in the search space and it
is express as (Salawudeen et al., 2018b):

X it 1  X it   r3  SM (3.26)

Where SM is a constant indicating a step movement and r3 is a random number which

penalizes the value of the step movement.

The flowchart of the smell agent optimization is shown in figure 3.4

31
 Start

Initialize all Parameters

Generate initial population

Evaluate the fitness of

initial population and
determine the position of
the agent

Update velocity and

perform the sniffing mode

If sniffing mode No
succeed?

Yes

Perform trailing mode

No

No Perform the
If trailing mode If random mode
random
succeed? succeed?
mode
Yes
Yes
Update bulletin with the
best solution

End

Figure 3. 4: Flow Chart of SAO

3.3.6 Identification of parameters to be optimized from controller model.

The controller parameters to be optimized are ( d1, k1, k2, d3 k3, k4) of the SMC
obtained from the Simulink model of the SMC. These parameters are the controller gains
to be optimized in order to improve the performance of the SMC.

32
3.3.7 Formulation of optimization problem based on the Parameters

obtained in 3.3.6

To obtain an optimized weigh for the controller input, the weighting factor is given
in the equation (3.27) was formulated into an objective function using the control law in
equation (3.21) and (3.22).The objective of the optimization problem is to minimize the
weight by optimizing the weighting factor d1, k1, k2, d3, k3, and k4 for root mean square
error minimization between the control inputs (u1 and u2) and their reference values (uref).
The objective function is given as

𝑈1𝑖− 𝑈𝑟𝑒𝑓 𝑈2𝑖− 𝑈𝑟𝑒𝑓

𝐹 = √∑𝑁
𝑖=1 ( ) + √∑𝑁
𝑖=1 ( ) (3.27)
𝑈1𝑖 𝑈2𝑖

The boundaries for the system variables were determined by considering the range derived
from the implementation of SMC without utilizing SAO. The optimum solution is
determined subject to the constraints:

4 < 𝑑1 < 6 (3.28)

1 < 𝑘1 < 2 (3.29)

1 < 𝑘2 < 2 (3.30)

4 < 𝑑3 < 6 (3.31)

1.5 < 𝑘3 < 2 (3.32)

1 < 𝑘4 < 2 (3.33)

Therefore, k1, k2, k3, k4, d1 and d3 are the parameters of the weighting factor that must be
optimized in order to achieve the objective function. The MATLAB code for
implementing the cost function is given in Appendix A

3.3.8 Optimization of the weighting factor using SAO

The SAO algorithm was employed in this research to optimize the cost function
parameters. Equation (3.27) serves as evaluation criteria for the optimality of the results
obtained by SAO. The flowchart for evaluating the cost function using SAO is given in
Figure 3.5.

33
 Start

Generate initial
population of size N

Evaluate the cost (eq.

3.27) using SAO
No

Termination
Reached?

Yes

Output Result End

Figure 3. 5: Flowchart of Objective Function Cost Evaluation

Figure 3.5 shows the flowchart for evaluating the weighting factor cost. At the beginning
stage, the initial population of size N is generated, and the values of the weighting factor
parameters (where randomly selected based on the constraints given in equations (3.28) to
(3.33). Then the selection process of the SAO is carried out in such a way that it searches
for the best combination of the parameters that will obtain the optimal solution. In search
of the optimum of the objective function, the three modes of the algorithm (sniffing,
trailing and random mode) are used. The parameters in the search space follows the trail of
the best smell molecule. The weighting factor cost function is optimized until the
termination criteria is reached. The SAO parameters used in this research are given in
Table 3.2. The MATLAB code for the implementation is given in Appendix B.

34
Table 3. 2: SAO Parameter

S/N Parameters Symbol Value Unit .

1. Mass m 2.4 Kg

2. Temperature T 3 K

3. Boltzman’s Constant K 1.38 x 10-23 JK-1

4. Population(Molecules) N 50 …………

5. Dimension D 3 …………

6. Iteration Itr 30 …………..

7. Step Movement SM 2.5 M

3.3.9 Simulation of the system model with the developed SAO-SMC

The simulation of the developed SMC with the GCS, given as a block diagram in
Figure 3.6, was simulated under different initial conditions (IC) using the close loop
system developed in Simulink/MATLAB as shown in Figure 3.7.

Figure 3. 6: Block Diagram of the Model

Figure 3.6 shows the Simulink block diagram connecting the SAO-SMC to the plant GCS.
Figure 3.7 is the Simulink model developed for control of the GCS using SMC. It is made
of a subsystem block that represents the dynamics of GCS and the controller, a gain the

35
parameters of the controller to be optimized. The scopes displayed the response of the
states of the system and that of the control law.

Figure 3. 7: Simulink Model of GCS using Optimized SMC

3.3.10 Performance evaluation

Performance metrics are metrics used to determine the performance improvement,

effectiveness, efficiency, and appropriate levels of internal controls of a system (Alagoz et

36
al..,, 2015). The performance metrics to be considered in this work are the transient
response and the steady state response.

The transient and steady state response of the system will be evaluated based on the
following characteristics.

1. Settling Time (𝑡𝑠 )

2. Overshoot (𝑀𝑝 )
3. Steady State Error (ess)

The metrics mentioned earlier were used to evaluate performance improvement using the
formula in Equation (3.34).

𝐾𝑆𝑀𝐶 −𝐾𝑆𝐴𝑂/𝑆𝑀𝐶
𝜂= × 100% (3.34)
𝐾𝑆𝑀𝐶

Where 𝜂 represent percentage improvement of the developed SAO-SMC over the sliding
mode controller (SMC), 𝐾𝑆𝑀𝐶 is the value obtained on sliding mode controller and
𝐾𝑆𝐴𝑂−𝑆𝑀𝐶 is the value obtained when SAO-SMC was used.

37
 CHAPTER FOUR

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Introduction

The simulation results obtained based on the methodologies presented in chapter

three that addressed the research objectives are discussed compared with the work of
(Hussein et al., 2020) are presented in this section.

4.2 Simulation Results

The results obtained for both stabilization and set point tracking of the system
states are presented in the sections that follow.

4.2.1 Convergence of SAO

In this section the convergence of the Smell agent optimization is discussed. As

SAO was used in obtaining best SMC parameters of the given cost function, the
convergence graph of simulation on benchmark model, on five different runs, are shown in

Figure 4. 1: SAO Convergence Plot on Benchmark System

38
Figure 4.1 shows the SAO convergence on the benchmark model when run 5 times. It can
be observed that the best convergence accuracy occurred at the 3rd run (indicated with blue
colour), converging at the 24th iteration with an optimized cost function.

4.2.2 SMC Parameter Selection

The SMC was tuned to search for best gains using SAO, after running 50
iterations, the best parameters were found as shown in Table 4.1.
Table 4. 1: Properties of Best Smell Object

SAO Parameters Value

Cost Function 1.61473904073533e+06

d1 4.877

K1 1.4463

K2 2.8329

d3 4.4193

K3 1.7402

K4 1.113

4.2.3 Stabilization Results

The results of the stabilization of the system using the developed SAO sliding
𝜋 𝜋
mode controller under different initial conditions (ICs) of [0.98, 0.2, 16 , 8 ] and

𝜋 𝜋
[0.5, 1.2, , ] which represent position of the system states were given in the results
8 4

presented in the figure 4.2, figure 4.3, figure 4.4, figure 4.5 and figure 4.6

39
Figure 4. 2: Linear Displacement of the Cart

From the analysis of Figure (4.2), it can be seen that there was a shape rise in amplitude of
trolley position of the GCS when an input signal was applied to the system when using
SMC without SAO. However, when using the SAO-SMC was reduced and the controller
was able to stabilize it faster to zero equilibrium point and the oscillation was less when
compared to the existing scheme using SMC without SAO. It implies that the
controllability of linear displacement state. This shows that the SAO-SMC provides an
improved dynamic stability for the GCS during operation.

Figure 4. 3: Linear Speed of the Cart

40
In Figure 4.3, it was observed that linear speed of the cart using SMC without controller
was having a longer amplitude at initial point, but later stabilized to zero equilibrium point
when the controller acted based on the error signal generated. However, using SAO-SMC,
the amplitude of the trolley settles faster to the equilibrium position showing improvement
over SMC without SAO.

Figure 4. 4: Load Swing Angle

Figure 4.4 shows the load swing angle of the GCS. From the figure above, it was observed
that using the SMC without SAO, the swing angle takes longer time to stabilize to the
equilibrium point. However, using SMC-SAO, the swing angle stabilize faster to the
equilibrium point which implies the system is state controllable.

41
Figure 4. 5: Load Angular Speed

Figure 4.5 shows the angular velocity of the GCS. From the figure above, it was observed
that the angular velocity using the developed SAO-SMC, there is a rise in amplitude due
to transient nature of the system, but it later converges faster to the equilibrium.

Using controller-based SMC without SAO, there is a sharp rise in amplitude, which
occurred due to transient nature of the system but it took a longer time to stabilized and
converged to the equilibrium.

The controller response for system stabilization under the first given initial conditions is
given in Figure 4.6.

Figure 4. 6: Stabilizing Control Action

Figure 4.6 shows control action u (t) that stabilized the states of the GCS under the given
initial conditions stated early. It was observed that, amplitude of the control action of the
SMC without SAO was large at some point due to the sharp rise in the system state
compared to SAO-SMC. But later the SAO-SMC settles at zero before SMC without
controller when the states stabilized at the desire equilibrium. Control input of the SMC
without SAO shows rapid changes which is dangerous in case of practical application.
Moreover, the developed controller with SAO requires less amount of control effort as
compared to SMC without SAO.

42
 4.3Performance Comparison

The system performance with the developed controller was compared to the SMC
reported in (Hussain et al., 2020) based on settling time, overshoot and steady state error
and the results were presented in Table 4.1.

Table 4. 2: Performance Comparison Between Developed SAO-SMC and SMC

Performance Controller Percentage

Improvement
Specification
(%)

SMC-SAO SMC

Swing angle Settling Time(s) 1.938 3.597 46.12

Overshot (%) 0.417 2.527 83.50

Steady state error 0.001 0.01 99.99

Table 4.2 summarizes the performance comparison of the developed SAO-SMC and SMC
controller without SAO reported in (Hussein et al., 2020). It can be observed that, the
developed controller outperformed the SMC without SAO in terms of settling time,
overshoot and steady state error minimization.

43
 CHAPTER FIVE

SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 Summary

In this research, the development of gantry crane system (GCS) using optimized-
based sliding mode control has been presented. An objective function was developed in
terms of controller gains that improves the performance of the GCS. A meta-heuristic
approach using SAO was employed to optimize the parameters of the controller using the
developed objective function as an evaluation criterion. The sliding mode controller
(SMC) was designed which uses the optimized parameter gains. The GCS was developed,
which was simulated with the SAO-SMC system in MATLAB/Simulink 2019b.
Performance evaluation of the GCS was carried out based on settling time, overshoot, and
steady state error as performance metrics. Simulation results showed that the developed
SAO-SMC outperformed the GCS system developed by (Hussein et al., 2020) by ensuring
stability and set point tracking.

5.2 Conclusion

This research has presented the development of a sliding mode controller

augmented with SAO Scheme for stabilization and tracking of load position coordinates in
the gantry crane system (GCS). The model of the GCS was developed in Simulink.
Subsequently, an optimal control approach using SMC and SAO based on the formulated
objective function was developed. The simulation was carried out in MATLAB/Simulink
2019b. The performance evaluation of the results was carried out and compared to the
GCS developed by (Hussein et al., 2020) in terms of settling time, overshoot and steady
state error.

The simulation results reveal better performance of the developed controller when
compared to controller presented in (Hussein et al., 2020) with 46.12% improvement in

44
settling time in terms of load swing. While this work report 83.50% improvement in
overshoot of load swing respectively. Additionally, it showed 99.99% improvement in
steady state error with respect load swing. Hence, a solution to problems of load swing and
precise load positioning in crane operation is presented.

The major limitation of this research that could be addressed in future research is
“chattering effects” that were neglected in the design of the controller.

5.3 Recommendations

The following are recommended for considerations in future works:

1. Observer based SMC for estimation of the underactuated states for faster system
response can be design.

2. Although the offline optimization of the meta-heuristic algorithm was used in this
research which reduces computational time, the online optimization approach can improve
the robustness of the gantry crane system.

3. Even though SAO performs well in tracking problems, it has a problem of longer
convergence time. The convergence time can be improved by modifying the algorithm.

45
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54
 APPENDIX A

MATLAB CODE FOR OBJECTIVE FUNCTION

55
 APPENDIX B

MATLAB CODE FOR SAO

clc;

clear

close all;

format long

tic

N=8; %input('Provide the Number of Smell Molecules:= ');%INITIAL POPULATION

D=6; %input('Provide the Search Dimension:= '); %Number of decision variables or

problem dimension.

run=50; %maximun number of iteration

CostFunction = @(u)mbuhariobj(u); % Cost Function

K=1.38064852*10^(-23); %boltzman constant

T=3; %Temperature of gas molecules.

SN=2.5;

lb=[4 1 1 4 1.5 1];

ub=[6 2 2 6 2 2];

m=2.4; %mass of the molecules.

olf=3.5; %Determine the Olfaction capacity of the agent.

55
abest=zeros(run,1);

bbest=zeros(run,D);

% Initial population (position) of the gas molecules as follows

tic

for i=1:N

molecules(i,:) = lb + (ub-lb).*rand(1,D);

y(i) = CostFunction(molecules(i, :)) ; %Evaluate the fitness of the initial smell

molecules

end

[ymin,index]=min(y); %Obtain the fitness of the best molecule

x_agent=molecules(index,:); %Determine the agent

[ymax,index]=max(y); %Obtain the fitness of the worst molecule

x_worst=molecules(index,:);

v=molecules*0.1;

for k=1:run

display(['run - ' num2str(k)])

% Implementing the sniffing mode

56
Smolecules = molecules;

for i=1:N

for j=1:D

% Update the molecular Velocity

v(i,j)=(v(i,j)+rand*sqrt(3*K*T/m));

end

end

% perform sniffing

for i=1:N

for j=1:D

Smolecules(i,j)=Smolecules(i,j)+v(i,j);

end

end

%Make sure no smell molecules excape the boundary

for i=1:N

for j=1:D

if Smolecules(i,j)<lb(j)

Smolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

elseif Smolecules(i,j)>ub(j)

Smolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

57
 end

end

end

for i=1:N

ys(i)=CostFunction(Smolecules(i,:));

end

[ysmin,sindex]=min(ys);

xs_agent=Smolecules(sindex,:);

[ysmax,sidx]=max(ys);

xs_worst=Smolecules(sidx,:); %Determine the position of worst smell

molecule

if ysmin<ymin

x_agent=xs_agent;

ymin=ysmin;

end

if ysmax>ymax

x_worst=xs_worst;

ymax=ysmax;

end

58
%%

%Evaluate the Trailing mode

Tmolecules = molecules;

for i=1:N

for j=i:D

Tmolecules(i,j)=Tmolecules(i,j)+rand*olf*(x_agent(1,j)-abs(Tmolecules(i,j)))...

-rand*olf*(x_worst(1,j)-abs(Tmolecules(i,j)));

end

end

%Make sure no smell molecules excape the boundary

for i=1:N

for j=1:D

if Tmolecules(i,j)<lb(j)

Tmolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

elseif molecules(i,j)>ub(j)

Tmolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

end

end

end

%Evaluate the fitness of the Trailing mode

for i=1:N

59
 yt(i)=CostFunction(Tmolecules(i,:));

end

[ytmin,tindex]=min(yt);

xt_agent=Tmolecules(tindex,:);

[ytmax,tidx]=max(yt);

xt_worst=Tmolecules(tidx,:); %Determine the position of worst smell

molecule

if ytmin<ymin

x_agent=xt_agent;

ymin=ytmin;

end

if ytmax>ymax

x_worst=xt_worst;

ymax=ytmax;

end

%%

% Compare the fitness of the trailing mode and the sniffing mode

% and implement the random mode

60
Rmolecules = molecules;

for i=1:N

if (yt(i) > y(i)) && (ys(i) > y(i))

for j=1:D

Rmolecules(i,j)=Rmolecules(i,j)+rand()*SN;

Rmolecules(i,j)=Rmolecules(i,j)+(v(i,j)+rand*sqrt(3*K*T/m));

Rmolecules(i,j)=Rmolecules(i,j)+rand*olf*(x_agent(1,j)-abs(Rmolecules(i,j)))...

-rand*olf*(x_worst(1,j)-abs(Rmolecules(i,j)));

if Rmolecules(i,j)<lb(j)

Rmolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

elseif Rmolecules(i,j)>ub(j)

Rmolecules(i,j)=lb(j) + (ub(j)-lb(j))*rand;

end

end

yr(i)=CostFunction(Rmolecules(i,:));

if yr(i) < y(i)

y(i)=yr(i);

61
 molecules(i,:) = Rmolecules(i,:);

end

else

if ys(i) < y(i)

y(i)=ys(i);

molecules(i,:) = Smolecules(i,:);

end

if yt(i) < y(i)

y(i)=yt(i);

molecules(i,:) = Tmolecules(i,:);

end

end

end

[ymin,Position]=min(y);

x_agent = molecules(Position,:);

abest(k)=ymin;

bbest(k,:) = x_agent;

62
 % Object=sort(SmellObject,'descend');

disp(['Iteration ', num2str(k), ' Decision Variable(s): ', num2str(bbest(k,:)),...

' :Smell Object = ', num2str(abest(k))])

end

disp('The Smell Object is Obtained as: ')

Best_Object=abest(end)

Best_Position = bbest(end,:)

figure

plot(abest,'b','LineWidth',2)

title('Smell Optimisation Algorithm','fontsize',12)

xlabel('Iteration Number','fontsize',12);ylabel('Smell object)','fontsize',12);

grid on

toc

63
 APPENDIX C

MATLAB CODE FOR GCS

clc

run SAO

d1=Best_Position(:,1);

k1=Best_Position(:,2);

k2=Best_Position(:,3);

d3=Best_Position(:,4);

k3=Best_Position(:,5);

k4=Best_Position(:,6);

disp('The optimized SAO Gantry Crane Sliding Mode Control Parameters are:')

d1

k1

k2

d3

k3

k4

simOut = sim('finalmbuhari','SrcWorkspace','Current');

simOut2 = sim('mbuhari','SrcWorkspace','Current');

X1=simOut.get('X1');

X2=simOut.get('X2');

64
X3=simOut.get('X3');

X4=simOut.get('X4');

sX1=simOut2.get('sX1');

sX2=simOut2.get('sX2');

sX3=simOut2.get('sX3');

sX4=simOut2.get('sX4');

stime=simOut2.get('stime');

time=simOut.get('time');

U2=simOut.get('U2');

sU2=simOut2.get('sU2');

figure

plot(time,X1,stime,sX1,'LineWidth',2)

xlabel('time(secs)');ylabel('Trolley Position Response(m)')

grid on

legend('SAO Sliding Mode Control','Sliding Mode Control','Location','Best')

title('Gantry Crane Trolley Position','fontsize',12)

figure

plot(time,X2,stime,sX2,'LineWidth',2)

xlabel('time(secs)');ylabel('Trolley Angle Response(degree)')

grid on

title('Gantry Crane Trolley Velocity','fontsize',12)

65
legend('SAO Sliding Mode Control','Sliding Mode Control','Location','Best')

figure

plot(time,X3,stime,sX3,'LineWidth',2)

xlabel('time(secs)');ylabel('Swing angle Response(degree)')

grid on

legend('SAO Sliding Mode Control','Sliding Mode Control','Location','Best')

title('Gantry Crane Swing Angle','fontsize',12)

figure

plot(time,X4,stime,sX4,'LineWidth',2)

xlabel('time(secs)');ylabel('Angular Velocity Response(degree/s)')

grid on

legend('SAO Sliding Mode Control','Sliding Mode Control','Location','Best')

title('Gantry Crane Trolley Angular Velocity','fontsize',12)

figure

plot(time,U2,stime,sU2,'LineWidth',2)

xlabel('time(secs)');ylabel('Control Input(N)')

grid on

title('Gantry Crane Control Action','fontsize',12)

legend('SAO Sliding Mode Control','Sliding Mode Control','Location','Best')

66