Abstract
This paper presents a phase portrait analysis-based safety control algorithm for excavators, using adaptive sliding mode control. Since working postures and material types cause the excavator's rotational inertia to vary, the rotational inertia was estimated, and this estimation was used to design an adaptive sliding mode controller for collision avoidance of the excavator. In order to estimate the rotational inertia, the recursive least-squares estimation with multiple forgetting was applied with the information of the swing velocity of the excavator. For realistic evaluation, an actual working scenario-based performance evaluation was conducted. Based on the estimated rotational inertia and an analysis of estimation errors, sliding mode control inputs were computed. The actual working scenario-based performance evaluation of the designed safety algorithm was conducted, and the results showed that the developed safety control algorithm can efficiently avoid a collision with an object in consideration of rotational inertia variations.