A study on real-time simulation and control of virtual excavator

Hydraulic excavators are among the most versatile earthmoving equipment: these machines are used in civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, grading and landscaping, pipeline construction and mining. Their main functions are digging, material handling and ground levelling. However, it is not safe for the worker to operate the excavator on the risk environments. Consequently, excavator's unmanned research focused on a few universities and companies are being studied. One of the most important things for researching automation of excavator is control of excavator. To find a feasible way to control excavator, firstly the Full Kinematic and dynamic model of the excavator's manipulator which three degrees of freedom were studied. The inverse kinematic equations are used to determine the joint angles and the actuator lengths corresponding to a specific position and orientation of the bucket, given in the base coordinate system. This paper will present a PID-computed torque control and design of a virtual excavating system base on real-time simulation. Some simulation results are given.