Automatic Explosives Loading System Based on Motion Reproduction Adapting to Changes in Unevenness and Hole Orientation

Automation of loading explosives in mountain tunnel excavation is being promoted to solve the shortage of skilled technicians and the high incidence of industrial accidents. Loading explosives requires human-specific skills such as appropriate force, sensation, and adaptation to environmental changes, which have not been considered in previous studies. In this study, force-aware automation was realized that can adapt to environmental changes based on motion reproduction. Motion reproduction uses bilateral control to record and reproduce movements, and has the advantage of reproducing forces and teaching human skills to manipulators. Meanwhile, if the 3D relative position of a loading hole and a 6-DOF manipulator or the orientation or the unevenness of the loading hole changes from the recording mode, the recorded task will not be successful. Therefore, a method is proposed herein for detecting the 3D relative position, orientation, and unevenness of a loading hole, besides a method of motion reproduction with compensation for these changes to realize an automatic explosives loading system. The orientation is detected from the area of the ellipse extracted via image processing. Experiments confirmed that changes from the recording mode could be compensated for during reproducing so that recorded insertion motion could be successfully reproduced, even if the position and orientation changed.