Remote control of excavator using head tracking and flexible monitoring method

•A portable control station using camera-based visual feedback was proposed.•A wearable display device was utilized to replace conventional monitors.•The observation system was based on the head tracking and flexible monitoring method.•Our method reduces the operation time in digging and leveling work.•The method improves usability, usefulness and ergonomics (health and safety).

A contemporary technique used to control tele-operated excavators based on naked-eye feedback exhibited inferior performance compared to those using camera-based visual feedback due to the effect of operator position. To improve the quality of visual feedback, this report presents a novel observation method with regard to the portable control of a tele-operated excavator. First, the former replaced traditional monitors through the implementation of a head mounted display (HMD) to improve user mobility and flexibility. The latter, combined with a head tracking and flexible monitoring method, provided operators with realistic working environment interactions in real-time. The performance of the proposed system was applied to a 1.5-ton excavator for testing based on the experimental approach. The experimental results revealed that operators of the excavator achieved superior performance through usage of the novel observation system.