• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.15 no.1
• /
• pp.51-58
• /
• 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
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.21-29
• /
• 2017

Recently, with having a great interest of the general public for the AR (Augmented Reality) technology, there have been lots of study to improve efficiency of a construction equipment with applying the AR technology to a construction equipment. The clear extrinsic calibration is essential to applying AR technology at the construction site without any error which came from superimposition between 'Real world' and 'Virtual world'. However, on the construction site, the clear extrinsic calibration is not possible, because of lack of time and budget for the specific survey, also, the huge error of the outdoor tracking system such as gyro, GPS system and so on. In this study, we do research about seamless superposition with unclear extrinsic calibration and the image process method for making AR navigator operating in the excavator. Based on this study, we figure that we can fully develop the AR navigator for the excavator. Furthermore, thereby operating AR navigator at many construction sites, we expect that the efficiency of the excavator will be improved. In addition, we can develop AR navigator for not only a excavator but all about construction equipment.

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.29-36
• /
• 2013

Excavation is an important work in mining, earth removal and general earthworks. Nowadays, automation in excavator has been studied by several researchers. In the excavator research methods, simulation is one of the low cost methods for applied to test safely. In this paper, designed a virtual hydraulic excavator that with the control and the dynamic. At first, the simulation of hydraulic system for excavator's attachment such as boom, arm and bucket using Matlab/Simhydraulic is presented. Second, the dynamic model of excavator is distributed to combine with the hydraulic system. For controlling this system, electric joysticks are used to operate the orifice open areas in Main Control Valve. The simulation result is described to analysis the performance of this virtual excavator.

• Journal of Drive and Control
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.27-33
• /
• 2015

Excavators are versatile earthmoving equipment that are used in civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, grading and landscaping, pipeline construction and mining. Effective operator training is essential to ensure safe and efficient operating of the machine. The virtual reality excavator based on simulation using conventional large size monitors is limited by the inability to provide a realistic real world training experience. We proposed a flexible observation method with a head tracking system to improve user feeling and sensation when operating a virtual reality excavator. First, an excavation simulator is designed by combining an excavator SimMechanics model and the virtual world. Second, a head mounted display (HMD) device is presented to replace the cumbersome large screens. Moreover, an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor is mounted to the HMD for tracking the movement of the operator's head. These signals consequently change the virtual viewpoint of the virtual reality excavator. Simulation results were used to analyze the performance of the proposed system.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
• /
• v.17 no.3
• /
• pp.116-124
• /
• 2016

Work efficiency of earth work which is one of the main works occurring in construction site mainly depends on the performance of individual operators of earth work equipment. Consequently, the skill of individual operators of earth work equipment can significantly affect overall construction schedules. Many invisible areas inevitably exist in construction site because of the nature of construction site where occlusions occur from structures being built, installed or moving equipment, moving workers, etc. The lack of visual information regarding tasks critically impedes the effective performance of operators of earth work equipment. AR (Augmented Reality) is a computer technology that superimposes virtual objects onto the real world scene. This characteristic of AR may address the lack of visual informations in earth work process, thus helping to improve the work efficiency of operators of earth work equipment. The purpose of this study is to present a task-visual information map that identifies visual informations required in tasks of earth work and which of the tasks are suitable for AR technology. This study focuses on visual informations in tasks of earth work with excavators. The map was created based on the investigations on the problems of each task of earth work with excavators and visual informations required to address the problems. Through the map, four visual informations were found to be suitable for AR technology to improve the work efficiency of excavator operators. Based on the findings of this study, AR systems for excavators can be developed more effectively.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.93-101
• /
• 2006

Recently, work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) become a hot issue in the industrial fields. To prevent the potential risk of workers, various approaches have been adopted. One of the approaches is to improve the design of product, that of jig (or fixture) and that of workstation in the early stage of the development. 3D simulation technology is known as the powerful method for detecting such problems before constructing the workstation, because it is possible to evaluate the posture of worker using 3D models in a cyber space. It enables to find the unexpected problems and save the time and cost for redesign and rework. This paper introduces a 3D simulation case study of workers in an excavator factory. 3D models of products, jigs were developed with CATIA. The assembly processes were animated in IGRIP and DPM. Finally the various postures of worker were simulated using Human. As a result, some postures were analysed as the risky jobs and the result of simulation was used to improve the system.

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

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
• /
• 2000.04a
• /
• pp.536-541
• /
• 2000

A low cost PC based simulator for excavator manipulation has been developed using virtual reality technology. The simulator consists of two joystick input devices, server and client PCs, an excavator kinematics module, and a graphic rendering program Open Inventor. In order to use two joysticks in the PC window environment multi-thread programing with network protocol TCP/IP has been used. To provide realistic view to the operator, CAD program Pro/Engineer and 3D modeller have been employed to create 3D part geometry of tile manipulator and virtual environmental geometries. Those geometries also have been transformed and imported to the Open Inventor. The Simulator developed is to be improved for more realistic excavator operational training.

• Journal of the Korea Society for Simulation
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.1-13
• /
• 2018

Earthwork planning is one of the critical issues in a construction process management. For the construction process management, there are some different approaches such as optimizing construction with either mathematical methodologies or heuristics with simulations. This paper propose a simulated earthwork scenario and an optimal path for the simulation using a reinforcement learning. For reinforcement learning, we use two different Markov decision process, or MDP, formulations with interacting excavator agent and truck agent, sequenced learning, and independent learning. The simulation result shows that two different formulations can reach the optimal planning for a simulated earthwork scenario. This planning could be a basis for an automatic construction management.

• Korean Journal of Computational Design and Engineering
• /
• v.20 no.3
• /
• pp.298-311
• /
• 2015

Nowadays, automatic digging operation of an excavator is a big challenge due to the complexity of digging environment, the hardness of soil and buried obstacles into the ground. In order to achieve the maximum soil bucket volume, this paper introduces a novel engineering model that was developed as a virtual excavator in the design phase. Through this model, the designs of mechanical and control systems for autonomous excavator are executed and modified easily before developing in real testbed. Based on a concept of an autonomous excavation, a mechanical system of excavator was first designed in SOLIDWORKS, and a soil model also was modeled by finite-element analysis in ANSYS, both modeled models were then exported to ADAMS environment to investigate the digging behavior through virtual simulation. An intelligent control strategy was generated in MATLAB/Simulink to control the excavator operation. The simulation results were demonstrated by effectiveness of the proposed excavator robot in testing scenarios with many soil types and obstacles.