Review of modelling and remote control for excavators

Abstract

An excavator is a typical hydraulic heavy-duty human-operated machine used in general versatile construction operations, such as digging, ground levelling, carrying loads, dumping loads, and straight traction. However, there are many tasks, such as hazard environment (nuclear decomposition, earthquake, etc) which is not suitable human working on site. The remotely controllable excavators are required to work in such environment. In this paper, we report the current progress of the on-going project. We investigate modelling and remote control issues of industry excavators. After reviewing the literature on the related work, architecture for remotely controllable excavators is proposed. The architecture covers actuators, modelling, sensors, image signal processing, communication networks, controllers, task & path planning, human computer interaction, optimal design, co-simulation, and virtual training environment. The details of modelling, communication and control of a remotely controllable excavator are provided.