Robust Disturbance Rejection Based Control with Extended-state Resonant Observer for Sway Reduction in Uncertain Tower-cranes

In this paper, the problem of load transportation and robust mitigation of payload oscillations in uncertain tower-cranes is addressed. This problem is tackled through a control scheme based on the philosophy of active-disturbance-rejection. Here, a general disturbance model built with two dominant components: polynomial and harmonic, is stated. Then, a disturbance observer is formulated through state-vector augmentation of the tower-crane model. Thus, better performance of estimations for system states and disturbances is achieved. The control law is then formulated to actively reject the disturbances but also to accommodate the closed-loop system dynamics even under system uncertainty. The proposed control schema is validated via experimentation using a small-scale tower-crane, and compared with other relevant active disturbance rejection control (ADRC)-based techniques. The experimental results show that the proposed control scheme is robust under parametric uncertainty of the system, and provides improved attenuation of payload oscillations even under system uncertainty.