• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.46-55
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• 2021

A forklift is a powered industrial vehicle used to lift and move materials over short distances. Nowadays, almost all forklifts are equipped with an automatic transmission due to its improved operator comfort and increased productivity. Thanks to marked improvement of transmission control unit equipped with highly-advanced microcontrollers, recently developed automatic transmission for forklift have various auxiliary functions such as creep, auto retardation, and automatic shift with excellent shift quality. This paper deals with the creep function which enables one to maneuver a forklift at the designated low speed by slip control of clutches. The design of creep function was based on four modes of creep operation depending on the status of the operator's shift lever and accelerator pedal. Control algorithms and control parameters for each mode were designed to achieve the desired static and dynamic performance. Vehicle test for the designed creep function was carried out with an independently developed embedded controller. Test results confirmed good creep speed control without speed error at a steady state with a mild shift shock during mode changes by stepping or releasing the accelerator.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.391-398
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• 2009

In this study, we introduce the design methodology of an optimized fuzzy cascade controller with the aid of hierarchical fair competition-based genetic algorithm(HFCGA) for ball & beam system. The ball & beam system consists of servo motor, beam and ball, and remains mutually connected in line in itself. The ball & beam system determines the position of ball through the control of a servo motor. The displacement change the position of ball leads to the change of the angle of the beam which determines the position angle of a servo motor. Consequently the displacement change of the position of the moving ball and its ensuing change of the angle of the beam results in the change of the position angle of a servo motor. We introduce the fuzzy cascade controller scheme which consists of the outer(1st) controller and the inner(2nd) controller as two cascaded fuzzy controllers, and auto-tune the control parameters(scaling factors) of each fuzzy controller using HFCGA. The inner controller controls the position of lever arm which corresponds to the position angle of a servo motor and the outer controller decides the set-point value of the inner controller. HFCGA is a kind of parallel genetic algorithms(PGAs), and helps alleviate the premature convergence being generated in conventional genetic algorithms (GAs). For a detailed comparative analysis from the viewpoint of the performance results and the design methodology, the proposed method for the ball & beam system which is realized by the fuzzy cascade controller based on HFCGA, is presented in comparison with the conventional PD cascade controller based on serial genetic algorithms.