Development of Force Reflecting Joystick for Hydraulic Excavator

抄録

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