• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.3391-3397
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• 2011

These excavators have been widely used due to their flexibility in handing various tasks via simple changes of their attachments. Since the performance of manually-operated excavators heavily depend on the operators' skill level, there is a strong need for developing automatic excavators in the industry. In order to achieve such goals, exiting approaches have studied direct modification of existing hydraulic systems in the excavator for feed back control of each link. This paper presents a miniaturized automatic excavator that can be used for the development and demonstration of advanced control algorithm for excavators under a safer environment with reduced cost. Two PCs were installed and connected to the excavator through wireless communications for its control and monitoring. Tracking control of each link using a time varying sliding mode controller was performed through experiments on the developed system to demonstrate its ability.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.4D
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• pp.433-442
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• 2010

Recent decrease in the availability of experienced skilled labor and a corresponding lack of new entrants has required the need for automating many of the construction equipment used in the construction industry. In particular, excavators are widely used throughout earthwork operations and automating its tasks enables work to be performed with higher productivity and safety. This paper introduces an optimal path generation method which is one of the core technologies required to make "Intelligent" excavators a reality. The method divides a given earthwork area into unit cells, identifies networks created by linking these cells, and identifies the optimal path an excavator should follow to minimize its total transportation costs. In addition, the method also accounts for drainage direction and path continuity to ensure that the generated path considers site specific conditions.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.984-989
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• 2008

Hydraulic excavators have been one of the most popular devices in the various industries for construction, forestry and agriculture etc. Because the excavators generally work in poor environment, the various organizations study to automate those. In this paper, a hydraulic simulation for evaluation of automatical excavation system is presented. It is using the AMESim based on the 1.5 ton excavator with fixed displacement pumps, and operated by signals those control pilot pressure to spools of the main control valve. The main control valve is regarded that only consists of boom, arm and bucket. This simulation program is expected to apply to evaluation of the controller for automatic excavation system and to estimate of effect in accordance with change of some components or parameter.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.136-145
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• 2009

The objective of the Intelligent Excavation System (IES) is to recognize the work environment and produce work plan and automatically control the excavator through integrating sensor and robot technologies. This paper discusses one of the core technologies of IES development project, development of 3D work environment modeling. 3D laser scanner is used for 3-dimensional mathematical model that can be visualized in virtual space in 3D. This paper describes (1) how the most appropriate 3D imaging system has been chosen; (2) the development of user interface and customization of the s/w to control the scanner for IES project; (3) the development of the mobile station for the scanner; (4) and the algorithm for the automatic registration of laser scan segments for IES project. The development system has been tested on the construction field and lessons learned and future development requirements are suggested.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.109-113
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• 2019

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2006

Virtual Manufacturing is a powerful methodology for developing a new product, new equipment and new production system. It enables the checking errors in design before production. This paper is a case study of virtual manufacturing in an excavator factory. The final welding operations of the boom and the rotating table of upper body are selected for application. 3D models of parts and fixtures are developed with $CATIA^{(R)}$ and 3D simulation models are developed with $IGRIP^{(R)}$. These models are used for verifying the design of fixture and for the motion design of robot. As a result, the manual welding systems are replaced by automatic systems and many design errors are corrected in the design phase, which reduces the developing cost and time.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.145-154
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• 2009

For developing an Automation equipment in construction, it is a key issue to develop 3D modeling technology which can be used for automatically recognizing environmental objects. Recently, for the development of "Intelligent Excavating System(IES), a research developing the real-time 3D terrain modeling technology has been implemented from 2006 in Korea and a stereo vision system is selected as the optimum technology. However, as a result of performance tests implemented in various earth moving environment, the 3D images obtained by stereo vision included considerable noise. Therefore, in this study, for getting rid of the noise which is necessarily generated in stereo image matching, the noise elimination algorithm of stereo-vision images for 3D terrain modeling was developed. The consequence of this study is expected to be applicable in developing an automation equipments which are used in field environment.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.136-144
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• 1996

We developed a part of stroke sensing cylinder for position control of automatic excavator and its measurement system. In this paper, for development of stroke sensing cylinder, we consist of 2-axis control instrument system with Hall sensor. A performance of piston rod with magnetic scales is evaluated by the developed measurement system. Furthermore, the position control for good performance of instrument system is achieved by a sliding mode control which is a new method diminishing the chattering in that control by setting 2-dead band along the swtching line. The unknown parameters for sliding mode control are estimated by the signal compression method.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.31-36
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• 2007

The excavator is complex machinery which has widely used in the construction site, deck of harbor and deep sea. The one of important issue of excavator system in recent is an automation of it in order to improve a working efficiency, a convenience working circumstance and work satisfaction. However, since there are large nonlinearities of control circuit, actuating cylinder, joiners of hydraulic units and changing loads etc., it is difficult to develope an automatic excavator system. Therefore, in this study, toy scale pneumatic excavator system is constructed and the remote control system is installed on it, before developing the automatic excavator system. In order to design the control system of the developed pneumatic excavator system, the transfer function is obtained using signal processing method and the controller gains of PID are decided based on CDM(coefficient diagram method). The obtained transfer function and the performance of the proposed control system is evaluated through experiments and computer simulation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.65-76
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• 1989

The objective of this paper is to design the variable structure system(VSS) controller for the tracking control of excavator which is driven by electro-hydraulic servomechansim. It is generally agreed that the dynamic characteristics of the robot arm such as excavator are coupled, time varying, and highly nonlinear, and also hydraulic system contains nonlinear characteristics in itself, so performing exact position control and trajectory tracking control need remarkable consideration. To solve this porblem, this system was designed as a variable structure system. The salient feature of VSS is that the sliding mode occur on a switching surface. While in sliding mode, the system remains insensitive to parameter variations and disturbances. This control algorithm was applied to a hydraulic excavator by simulaltion and to a simulator by experiment. And its effectiveness was verified. And the results of VSS for the electro-hydraulic excavator was compared with that of the PID when load disturbances and system parameter variations exist.