Hydraulic Excavator with Digging Operation Assisting System

2001.09 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers by Kazuo Fujishima, Hiroshi Ogura and Sadahisa Tomita
Trench digging for underground pipelines has never been easy, especially the operator cannot set a guideline for digging reference and at times does not have a clear line of sight and needs to be assisted by another person. This paper describes the development of a hydraulic excavator equipped with an electrical lever system (In place of the conventional pilot lever). The excavator is equipped with a limited plane digging control system with a display monitor. With the help of this system the operator can pre-set a desired working plane through the monitor screen. Then digging control system will automatically control the actuators so that the bucket will not go below the set plane (Level).

This system also allows the plane to be set either horizontally or in any angle to the horizontal. The monitor will display the digging state in real time.

This systems will be quite useful especially for the City Water supply Pipe Lines, Storm Water Drains, Desilting of Canals, Sewer sytems, Telecom Cable laying and other under water digging applications viz for increasing the draft at the harbours, etc.