Development of Force Reflecting Joystick for Hydraulic Excavator

Abstract

In teleoperation field robotic system such as hydraulically actuated robotic excavator, the maneuverability and convenience is the most important in the operation of robotic excavator. Particularly the force information is important in dealing with digging and leveling operation in the teleoperated excavator. This paper presents a new force reflecting joystick in a velocity-force type bilateral teleoperation system. The master system is electrical joystick and the slave system is hydraulic cylinder. Particularly pneumatic motor is used newly in the master joystick for force reflection and the information of the pressure of slave cylinder is measured and utilized as force feedback signal. This paper also proposes a novel force-reflection gain selecting algorithm based on artificial neural network. Finally a series of experiments are conducted under various load conditions using a laboratory-made one axis slave cylinder and load simulator.