Independent motion control of a tower crane through wireless sensor and actuator networks

•A complete nonlinear dynamic model of a tower crane is developed.•Towards wireless network control a signal synchronization scheme is proposed.•The scheme reconstructs the signals and makes constant the communication delays.•I/O decoupling of the crane variables, via a wireless controller, is proposed.•To solve I/O decoupling a realizable multi-delay dynamic controller is designed.

The problem of independent control of the performance variables of a tower crane through a wireless sensor and actuator network is investigated. The complete nonlinear mathematical model of the tower crane is developed. Based on appropriate data driven norms an accurate linear approximant of the system, including an upper bound of the communication delays, is derived. Using this linear approximant, a dynamic measurable output multi delay controller for independent control of the performance outputs of the system is proposed. The controller performs satisfactory despite the nonlinearities of the model and the communication delays of the wireless network.