Task Delegation and Architecture for Autonomous Excavators

— The construction industry is required to deliver safe, productive machines. One method being considered by heavy equipment manufacturers is autonomy. Implementing autonomy to heavy machines is unique, due to the highly skilled nature of a machine’s operation meaning that different levels of autonomy may be more suitable for different tasks. Therefore, effective collaboration strategies between human operators and machines are needed. This paper proposes a machine architecture that considers the task delegation between the operator and machine.