Fast or Cheap: Time and Energy Optimal Control of Ship-to-Shore Cranes

Abstract: This paper addresses the trade-off between time- and energy-efficiency for the problem of loading and unloading a ship. Container height constraints and energy consumption and regeneration are dealt with. We build upon a previous work that introduced a coordinate system suitable to deal with container avoidance constraints and incorporate the energy related modeling. In addition to changing the coordinate system, standard epigraph reformulations result in an optimal control problem with improved numerical properties. The trade-off is dealt with through the use of weighting of the total time and energy consumption in the cost function. An illustrative example is provided, demonstrating that the energy consumption can be substantially reduced while retaining approximately the same loading time.