Semi-autonomous control for remote excavation

Semi-autonomous control

In remote control, operability is significantly degraded due to communication latency and so on. For this reason, an autonomous control system is effective, however an autonomous control system that accepts human operation is required for human intervention, such as drilling operations. In this research, an autonomous control system is designed using a control system based on an orbit attractor, and a mechanism and interface are designed to allow human intervention.

1. Semi-autonomy for force control

By adding an index parameter i, the dimension of the dynamics is expanded.

　　

As shown ni the figure, an attractor is designed with each excavation depth corresponding to the value of index parameter.
By changing i depending on external force on the bucket and human input, based on Kalman filter, the excavation is autonomously controlled so that
  • it keeps the force in a constant value
  • it changes the excavation depth based on human input

2. Interface design by Bifurcation, Stagnation and Deformation of the attractor

In excavation process, there is a selection of operations. Therefore, a stagnation point is placed at the bifurcation of the attractor. This allows the design of an interface that stops at the bifurcation point and guides the operator to the desired trajectory.
In addition, the system adds the function to exit stagnation if the human moves quickly, and to deform the trajectory if the human moves slowly.


e-mail : .m.aa@m.titech.ac.jp