Container crane system using an anti-sway controller with an image sensor

Speedy operation efficiency is constantly required of the container crane operators who work for cargo handling in the port. They are experts in suppressing the sway motion which is generated in the process of the handling. This undesirable motion may deteriorate the operation efficiency due to strained nerves of the operator. To overcome this problem, we propose an anti-sway controller with an image sensor for a container crane. The image sensor measures the displacement of the spreader. Especially, the measured displacement is in real time fed back to the controller. The image processing technique here is a kind of robust template matching method, named Vector Code Correlation (VCC), devised to consider the conditions of real environments. The anti-sway controller is installed on the spreader. The controller has a role to suppress the sway motion of the spreader, as soon as possible. We employ the simple mechanism, so that it can be easily applicable to an existing system. The details and performance of the container crane system is introduced together with the experimental results performed with the model system. In this paper, we will also show that the system has the sufficient efficiency and accuracy for the use on practical job-site.