Control Concept for a Hydraulic Mobile Machine Using a Haptic Operating Device

A control methodology for the operation of a hydraulic excavator using a haptic operating device is developed. The main idea is to use position controllers for both the excavator and the operating device where both control loops output the reference position to the other, i.e., two position controlled systems are placed in a feedback loop with each other. The human operator acts as an input disturbance to the operating device. This approach allows intuitive operation of the machine and gives the operator haptic feedback of the boom position.Internal model control (IMC) is employed to design the position controllers for both the hydraulic manipulator and the operating device. To this end, a simplified design rule for the IMC filter and a novel anti-windup approach for models with pure integrators are proposed.The master-slave control methodology is exemplified on an 18 ton excavator; measurement results are given.