Ropeways must be stopped when there is strong cross-wind because the ensuing oscillations are a safety risk. In this paper, we developed a controller for an actuated mass onboard the gondola aiming to increase the gondola's damping, thus reducing the oscillations and permitting operation to continue. We modeled the gondola as a pendulum, acknowledged the limitation on the actuated mass' displacement, and included input and parametric uncertainty. We synthesized the controller through a two-step process. First, we used numerical optimization to compute a static full state feedback controller specifically designed to reduce the effects that cross-wind gusts and random disturbances have on the gondola. For this purpose, we included a wind model in the cost function. Then, we used this controller in a model to synthesize an H_∞ controller with reduced actuator requirements. Analysis of the linearized system showed that the proposed H_∞ controller robustly stabilized the system despite the modeled uncertainty. Furthermore, it made the peak magnitude of the gondola's oscillations in the median of 1005 simulations 51.4 percent less than that of the uncontrolled system, and 19.3 percent less than that of the system using a passive dynamic vibration absorber.
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