A study of crane operator performance comparing PD-control and input shaping

Cranes are the primary heavy lifters for a wide variety of industries. However, all cranes suffer from payload oscillation. Numerous feedback-based control methods have been proposed to reduce oscillation. Command-shaping is another method that has received significant attention. This paper compares the two methods for crane control. It also presents a study of twelve novice crane operators using representative input-shaping and feedback control methods. Both feedback control and input shaping reduced average task completion time from the manually controlled case, with input shaping providing the lowest average completion time. Input shaping also allowed the operators to move the trolley through a shorter total path length toward the target, suggesting that input shaping may save energy compared to the feedback and manual control methods.