Haptic Excavator

Hi everybody,

As I stated on my previous post, I'm working on a project for a multimodal excavator. The purpose of this project is to replace the traditional control for a different joystick which allows the operator to have tactile cues, such as feeling pressure, vibration, and also to provide a more intuitive interface, improving the productivity of the operation. I'll post a video showing the device later, but today I'll talk about what I've been doing so far. Over the past weeks my mission has been to revise a mathematical model for the haptic control and for the traditional control. This model includes transfer functions representing the cues (visual, auditory and haptic), the neuromuscular system, force generator, central nervous and task dynamics systems. By combining all these functions, it is possible to come up with a equation of the operator-excavator model. Once I have the equation, I can plug into Matlab and generate some plots to evaluate the systems using some parameters such as stability. Currently, I'm plotting the charts on Matlab and making this evaluations.

I hope everybody is enjoying the experience.

Enio Frota.