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This paper describes the steps involved in the tip control and automation of a hydraulic boom and knuckle crane which is used to position loads with accuracy and repeatability in shortest possible time. The crane is required to perform erection and installation of a modular bridge consisting of number of identical modules which have to be picked up or raised, moved along a predefined path and lowered at a drop point sequentially by the crane. Automation and tip control of the crane will reduce the burden on the operator and also save time. The requirement of raising and lowering of the loads require synchronised operation of two joints of the crane. For this purpose two different algorithms were derived, and the one which was feasible with the crane was used in the actual trials. For modelling and simulation of the crane, the kinematic equations of the crane were developed in MATLAB & the hydraulic circuit simulation & 3D Model of the crane simulation was developed in ITI_SimulationX. Actual system trials were done using dummy loads with the crane. The sensors to obtain feedback of joint angles were retrofitted on the existing crane structure. In place of the manual joystick controller, a new MMI based control system based on PLC was designed. The adapted crane can be operated manually by the individual valve joysticks as well as in automatic mode by the MMI and PLC based controller. The positions of the crane are taught to the controller using ‘teach’ mode in the controller. The controller calculates the new positions based on the kinematic equations and gives command to the valves to position the load accordingly.