Feasibility Study for the Automation of Commercial Vehicles on the Example of a Mobile Excavator

The automation of mobile working equipment used in farming, forestry and the construction industry has great market potential. Tasks of a highly complex nature could be executed without intervention of the operator. Despite the potential significance of this topic, only very few results of international research projects in robotics have heretofore been applied in the serial production of commercial vehicles. The joint project AMoBa (Autonomer Mobiler Bagger, Autonomous Mobile Excavator) of Kaiserslautern University and Volvo CE aims to transfer knowledge and experience from the field of robotics to the area of mobile excavators. The objective is the realization of fully autonomous operation in basic construction activities, such as terrain modeling or trenching. For this purpose a prototype is being prepared by modifying an 18t Volvo Mobile Excavator to meet the project’s requirements. It is being equipped with electronic interfaces to control all relevant functions; i.e. the hydraulic arm cylinders, thereby employing sensor devices for the acquisition of the kinematics (i.e. travel sensors or angular sensors) and sensors for the acquisition of the environment surrounding the robotic excavator. For example, 2-D laser scanning devices and 3D cameras. Mechanical and hydraulic simulation models are being created to enable studies of suitable algorithms for trajectory control of the excavators’ kinematics. Algorithms concerning the global task of processing the automation task are developed and tested in the software framework MCA2 before they are ported to the prototype. The MCA2 framework combines the simulation of the excavator and its environment, including the simulation of environment sensors. On completion of this project, the algorithms developed in the simulation will be verified on the prototype.