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Towards Fully Integrated Autonomous Excavation: Autonomous Excavator for Precise Earth Cutting and Onboard Landscape Inspection

September 10, 2025 by Inkyu Jang, Junha Kim, Dongjae Lee, Changhyeon Kim, Changsuk Oh, Youngbum Kim, Sangwook Woo, Heejee Sung, H. Jin Kim

Autonomous excavator systems can alleviate the issues caused by the shortage of skilled labor forces and increasing labor costs. For autonomous excavation, real-time landscape estimation, excavation path generation, control, and precise landscape inspection are all essential. In this article, we propose and experimentally validate an integrated autonomous excavator system incorporating all these elements. Specifically, unlike previous research, we introduce a sensor arrangement capable of sufficiently covering the regions of interest regardless of the inclination of the target landscape, a motion planning method that satisfies geometric and physical constraints, and a precise postexcavation inspection module using only onboard sensors. The proposed methodology was experimentally validated using a real 30-ton hydraulic excavator. It successfully performed a cutting task on an upward slope with 45° inclination and achieved a centimeter-level accuracy through autonomous repetitive excavation; also, the proposed postexcavation inspection method demonstrated subcentimeter precision within seconds using onboard sensors only.

For more about this article see link below.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10697977

For the open access PDF link of this article please click here.

Filed Under: Past Features Tagged With: Accuracy, Autonomous systems, Cameras, Employment, Excavation, Hardware, Hydraulic systems, Inspection, Laser radar, Personnel, Real-time systems, Robot sensing systems, Three-dimensional displays

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IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine (RAM) has over 14,000 readers who are the people who drive this remarkable technology. More than half work in basic research and many of the others are top level engineers and decision-makers in industry.  This magazine highlights new concepts in Robotics and Automation that are applied to real-world systems. It delivers tutorial and survey papers by distinguished experts in the field, organizes focused special issues on hot topics, and provides a forum for disseminating and discussing emerging trends, novel achievements, and selected news relevant to the development of the whole community active in these fields worldwide.

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