In this paper, we present a minimal torque and time variable trajectory optimization method for autonomous excavator considering the soil-tool interaction. The method formulates the excavation motion generation as a trajectory optimization problem and takes into account geometric, kinematic and dynamics constraints. To generate time-efficient trajectory and improve the overall optimization efficiency, we propose a time variable trajectory optimization mechanism so that the time intervals between the keypoints along the trajectory subject to the optimization. As a result, the method uses few keypoints and reduces the total number of optimization variables. We further introduce a soil-tool interaction force model, which considers the geometric shape of the bucket and the physical properties of the soil. The experimental result on a high fidelity dynamic simulator shows our method can generate feasible trajectories, which satisfy excavation task constraints and are adaptive to different soil conditions.
@article{arxiv.2006.00811,
title = {Time Variable Minimum Torque Trajectory Optimization for Autonomous Excavator},
author = {Yajue Yang and Jia Pan and Pinxin Long and Xibin Song and Liangjun Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.00811},
year = {2020}
}