Progress Estimation of an Excavation Pit

This paper presents a method for automated excavation speed and progress estimation. First, a measure for the progress speed of an excavation pit is taken from the lit-erature and evaluated regarding the possibility for automa-tion. For each possible parameter, an automated extraction algorithm is presented. The used system is an autonomous excavator arm of a backhoe loader where the used hard-ware and software system is described. Experimental eval-uation of the presented approach has been done with the autonomous system for a small trench, including multiple digging cycles. The resulting measurements seem to include some systematic errors which could be identified and suitable sanity checks could be implemented, removing the erroneous measurements. The remaining measurements were used to determine the excavation speed of the autonomous excavator arm and compared to the values of experienced and amateur operators.