Study on Intuitive Configuration of Joystick for Operator in Flattening Task of Excavator

Hydraulic excavators are among the most versatile earthmoving equipment: these machines are used in civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, grading and landscaping, pipeline construction and mining. Especially, to flattening the ground these, the excavator operator actuates the machine controls (joysticks, pedals and switches) in an organized form to achieve the desired straight motion; the actuation of these controls is a complex and not intuitive task, and therefore it requires long and costly training periods. This paper present an intuitive configuration of joystick for operator in flattening task of excavator. This method control lets each joystick perform independent horizontal and vertical motions of the end of bucket. The proposed method allows users to control the excavator intuitively and operate complex motions smoothly with no constraints. For this, a virtual excavator scheme with a joystick control has been developed. Besides, the virtual reality interface is designed to allow the use be able to observe the motion of the attachment of this model.