A 3D model based control of an excavator.pdfVIP

Automation in Construction 15 2006 571 – 577 /locate/autcon A 3D model based control of an excavator Tomi Makkonen a,*, Kelervo Nevala b,a, Rauno Heikkila¨ c a University of Oulu, Department of Mechanical Engineering, P.O. Box 4200, FIN-90014, Finland b VTT Electronics, P.O. Box 1100, FIN-90570 Oulu, Finland c _ University of Oulu, Research Unit of Construction Technology, P.O. Box 4400, FIN 90014, Finland Accepted 26 July 2005 Abstract New technologies facilitate machine control systems, which use data from CAD and 3D measurement systems to automatically control construction machinery, such as an excavator. This paper examines the possibilities of controlling a six degrees of freedom DOF excavator with the final objective of controlling the movements of the excavator by using a positioning system such as a GPS in conjunction with a CAD model of the road surface. In comparison with the traditional 4 DOF machine, the excavator was provided with two additional degrees of freedom by applying a 2 DOF Rototilt, an accessory commonly in use. To study this problem, Msc.Adams with Matlab/Simulink was used as a simulation environment. In this paper the path of the bucket is calculated by using the CAD reference of the target plane. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Robotic excavator; Path generation; Dig planning; Modelling; Simulation; Triangular terrain model; CAD 1. Introduction Simulation tools like Msc.Adams and Matlab/Simulink are well suited for virtual development of excavator automation, A robotic excavator is not a new idea as there are many especially so for considering the problem of path generation or interesting and advanced systems; for example, Autonomous checking a set of equations like inverse kinematics. They are Truck Loading from Carnegie Mellon University [1], LUCIE an efficient tool when developing new control methods and from Lancaster University [2] and Kom