Autonomous Excavator System for Construction Earth Moving

Construction automation is vital for increasing efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing safety in the industry. In this paper, we present our latest advancements in autonomous excavator systems (AES) specifically designed for earth moving operations in construction sites. Our proposed architecture integrates perception, planning, and control by merging multi-modal perception sensors like LiDAR and cameras with state-of-the-art localization and mapping, object detection, terrain traversability mapping, motion planning, and navigation algorithms. To showcase the performance, we successfully conducted a live demonstration for construction earth moving with multiple tasks including trucking loading, unstructured terrain navigation, and trenching. The AES is able to seamlessly complete all three tasks without any human operator intervention, highlighting its advanced level of effectiveness and robustness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first autonomous excavator system capable of seamlessly performing multiple construction earth moving tasks.