A Robotic Soil Excavator for Truck Loading:: Kinematics, Dynamics and Motion control for a 4-DOF Robotic Manipulator prototype

This paper presents a developed prototype of an automated robotic soil excavator. This prototype has four degrees of freedom (4 DoF) which consists of a series of four rigid links that are connected by four revolute joints as in Fig. 1. However, developing this prototype aims to reduce time and efforts that are needed by conventional excavator. Therefore, this prototype is developed to achieve predefined motions with various phases: excavation of the soil from a designated point, transportation, as well as deposition the soil in a truck within a specified time duration. For the prototype development, suitable components and mechanical frames must be integrally selected. Moreover, the kinematics and dynamics models are derived for the manipulator to analyze and plan motions, determine the necessary driving torques and form the basis for several model-based motion control algorithms. Using MATLAB and Simulink, model-based motion control algorithms were developed and tested, and a PD controller with a gravity compensator was applied to the physical robot.