Basic Technology toward Autonomous Hydraulic Excavator

Abstract

Civil engineering construction work has always been accompanied by a high proportion of tasks that are either dangerous or unpleasant or both. Enhancing the general working environment and boosting safety levels are critical issues for the industry. Meanwhile, the industry has been slow to embrace IT, and there is substantial scope for the use of technology to boost efficiency, cut costs and improve quality levels in construction. In a bid to address this issue, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport launched a five-year project in FY2003 entitled Development of Construction Robots and Associated IT Systems. This paper reports on the research and development work carried out by the authors in connection with the project. The project developed a three-dimensional space description method for civil engineering execution, which can now be applied to finished work control etc. and used by construction machinery. Foundation technologies needed for self-controlled excavation and loading by a hydraulic excavator have been developed and verified to the level that, under basic conditions, they have attained speed and precision equal to that by a human operator.Keywords: execution technology, information technology, robot technology, three-dimensional information, construction equipment Outline of, and Background to, the ProjectCivil engineering work is still performed in inferior work environments and involves dangerous and grueling tasks. And the introduction of IT is behind that in other industries, demanding the development of technologies to increase work efficiency, cut costs, and improve quality. Some researches on this field have produced a number of results, such as the research about the Automatic Excavator. The goals of the research were to apply IT, RT etc. to earthwork in order to achieve execution control such as control and inspection of completed work based on three dimensional design and land form information, plus IT execution including supporting and automating the operation of construction machinery (see Fig. 1) [12]

Research on effective teleoperation of construction machinery fusing manual and automatic operation

“…Figure 1 shows the digging cycle. Figure 1 (2) shows an image of a hoist swing. Operators use an excavator for multiple types of work in the field, e.g., excavating, carrying, loading, dozing, etc.…”

“…Yamamoto proposed autonomous excavating operation using a hydraulic excavator [2]. The complete calculation of the behaviors of stone and sand is difficult, as these behaviors may change owing to the machine control, the weight, the ratio of water content, the ratio of composition, etc.…”

Virtual Graphic Representation of Construction Equipment for Developing a 3d Earthwork Bim

“…The real-time tracking and modeling of equipment configuration is also required for machine guidance and autonomous control of earthwork equipment. Yamamoto et al (2009) developed an autonomous machine control so that an excavator could execute digging and loading grounds under limited conditions. In this approach, the equipment configuration was estimated using potentiometers installed on the hinges of the excavator sections of the boom, arm, and bucket, while the position of the machine was determined using the Global Positioning System (GPS).…”

Part based model and spatial–temporal reasoning to recognize hydraulic excavators in construction images and videos

“…Hydraulic excavators are highly articulated and are extensively used in construction due to their versatility to carry out a variety of operations in different environments from quarries to compact urban sites. They have also been the subject of other research such as automating excavator operation [18], and improving equipment safety [19]. Measuring the idle time of hydraulic excavators using color space values [1] to isolate the machine in images with soil and snow backgrounds was attempted.…”