Semi-Autonomous Control of Leader-Follower Excavator using Admittance Control for Synchronization and Autonomy with Bifurcation and Stagnation for Human Interface

So far, multiple LCD monitors and joysticks have been used for remote operation of excavators while it has low work efficiency. This is because it is difficult for the operator to recognize the state of the excavator and its surrounding environment. We have developed a semi-autonomous control system which consists of autonomy (attractor based dynamical system) and human action (admittance control). On the other hand, excavation tasks require the task selection. In this paper, we propose a nonlinear dynamical system with attractor with stagnation and bifurcation. The stagnation of the attractor is designed as a negative divergence vector field that converges to a point on the trajectory. A stagnation is placed at a bifurcation point of the trajectory, and the operator selects the next task by adding a force to the leader system.