Hardware-In-The-Loop Simulation (HILS) Based Design and Robustness Evaluation of an Intelligent Gantry Crane System

The use of gantry crane systems for transporting payload is very common in industrial application. However, moving the payload using the crane is not an easy task especially when strict specifications on the swing angle and on the transfer time need to be satisfied. To overcome this problem, this paper describes development of an intelligent gantry crane system based on the mechatronic design. A lab-scale gantry crane is designed and then its intelligent controllers are developed. Fuzzy logic controllers are adopted, designed and implemented for controlling payload position as well as the swing angle of the gantry crane. The performance of the intelligent gantry crane system is evaluated on a hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS) environment. Moreover robustness of the proposed system is also evaluated. The result shows that the intelligent gantry crane system designed based on the mechatronic design approach has better performance compared with the automatic gantry crane system controlled by classical PID controllers. Moreover simulation result shows that the intelligent gantry crane system is more robust to parameter variation than the automatic gantry crane system.