CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Project Introduction
A gantry crane is a type of overhead crane. With a gantry crane, the supports holding the crane up are fixed in location. They cannot move, and therefore the crane
cannot move. For this reason, everything that the crane is going to lift must be brought to the crane. The supports form a large rectangular frame upon which the
crane can move forward and back, and left and right. Anything that can be reached by the gantry crane is referred to as being in its operating area.
Figure 1.1 The Gantry Crane
Gantry cranes are very common in factories, where they are used to move things along the factory floor as the product is slowly assembled. For instance, if one
is building a large metal piece of equipment, the metal parts may arrive on a truck. The truck will park within the operating area of the gantry crane, and the gantry crane
can then be used to unload the parts. The gantry crane may also be used to move the parts around, typically along the assembly line as the components are assembled.
From the privious project, the gantry crane is controlled by the PIC programming, that is programmed by the time and speed of the motor. In this situation
the swing angle of the object can not be controlled. The fundamental motions of a gantry crane consist of traversing, load hosting
and load lowering [1]. When the crane is starting to move or the crane is stopping, it induces undesirable swinging of the suspended load. This swinging can caused
damage to the payload or other objects in the workplace. Traditionally, an experienced crane operator is required to keep the oscillations under control. But, the
operator should be expertise to control the crane. It is because that the payload is free to swing in a pendulum like motion.
There are many types of the approach that can be used to implement in gantry crane. Some of the approaches are open-loop and close-loop. The open-loop approach
is the input shaping where input shaping is a feedforward control technique for improving the settling time and the positioning accuracy, while minimizing residual
vibration, of computer-controlled machines. Moreover the close-loop approach needs the feedback controller to do the correction on the system.
1.2 Project Objectives