Excavator Posture Estimation and Position Tracking System Based on Kinematics and Sensor Network to Control Mist-Spraying Robot

In the construction field, when an excavator dismantles a building using an attachment, a large amount of fine dust is generated, causing air pollution. In this study, a mist-spraying robot was proposed, aiming to effectively suppress the generation of fine dust in the construction field. The robot could spray mist while motion tracking the attachment of the excavator. The mist-spraying robot recognized and tracked the source of the fine dust by estimating the posture and position of the excavator. Forward kinematics was used to estimate the posture of the excavator, and the position was estimated using a real-time kinematic global positioning system (RTK-GPS). The fine dust source motion tracking control performance of the mist-spraying robot was verified by measuring the error when the excavator attachment moved horizontally, vertically, and helically. The mean distance between the spraying direction of the mist-spraying robot and the attachment of the excavator was within 0.4 m. Considering the range in which mist is ordinarily sprayed, this mist-spraying robot is expected to successfully track and suppress the generation of fine dust.