A tele-operated humanoid robot drives a backhoe

In this paper, we will describe our attempt for a tele-operated humanoid robot to drive a backhoe. It will be possible for a humanoid robot to drive an industrial vehicle instead of a human operator. If a humanoid robot can be operated by a human operator from a remote site, it enables to use a general type of vehicle safely in a dangerous field. We introduced a backhoe as the target vehicle to show the possibility of driving a vehicle in a sitting posture. The robot sits down with balancing on a cockpit of the backhoe and manipulates control levers for driving. We developed a portable remote control device and remote control methods to operate the humanoid robot. For the evaluation, it is tested to sit down and manipulate the levers on the driving cockpit of the real backhoe. To compare it with a human's work, the efficiency is close to practical use.