Motion Reproduction of Loading Explosive with Compensation for Variations in Position and Direction of Hole by Image Processing

Mountain tunnel excavation has two problems, which are a shortage of skilled engineers and frequent industrial accidents. Automation of mountain tunnel excavation is progressing to solve these problems. However, loading explosives in mountain tunnel excavation is difficult to automate because this task requires a sense of force. Motion reproduction is an expected method to automate the process of loading explosives that takes the sense of force into account. It uses bilateral control to save and reproduce motions and has the advantage of being able to reproduce forces and teach human skills to manipulators. On the other hand, motion reproduction cannot succeed in saved tasks when the relative position of the loading hole and manipulator or the direction of the loading hole changes from the saving phase. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to compensate for variations in relative position and direction by image processing based on depth information in motion reproduction for automation of loading explosives. Experiments showed the effectiveness of the proposed method through the successful reproduction of the insertion motion despite variations in relative position and direction.