Abstract
Remote control of construction machines has been considered to ensure safety of operators in hazardous works such as indoor dismantling. However, work efficiency of the remote operation is lower than that by the on-board operation and the number of skilled operators of construction machines, especially who are accustomed to the remote operation, is decreasing. Therefore, intuitive and efficient remote control interfaces for construction machines are required. In this paper, we design and evaluate several control interfaces for remote control of a small-size backhoe, aiming at high work efficiency nearly equal to that by the on-board operation. We investigate two control methods, joint control and end-point (tool) control. As for the control interface design, we propose some new controllers including a master-slave-type controller and evaluate their performance from various viewpoints, comparing with the conventional controller. The results of the evaluation test show that the proposed controllers are better than the existing controller in working efficiency, low fatigue, and intuitiveness.
