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A Robotic Excavator for Autonomous Truck Loading
journal contribution
posted on 1999-01-01, 00:00 authored by John Bares, Anthony Stentz, Sanjiv Singh, Patrick RoweExcavators are used for the rapid removal of soil and other materials in mines, quarries, and construction sites.
The automation of these machines offers promise for increasing productivity and improving safety. To date, most research
in this area has focussed on selected parts of the problem. In this paper, we present a system that completely automates the
truck loading task. The excavator uses two scanning laser rangefinders to recognize and localize the truck, measure the soil
face, and detect obstacles. The excavator’s software decides where to dig in the soil, where to dump in the truck, and how to
quickly move between these points while detecting and stopping for obstacles. The system was fully implemented and was
demonstrated to load trucks as fast as human operators.