Staff and students at Lancaster University have, for the past five years, been involved in the development of an autonomous robot excavator LUCIE (Lancaster University Computerised Intelligent Excavator). The aim of the project is to add autonomy in order to produce a robot excavator with the following characteristics: it should concentrate on the task of trenching; it should adapt to different soil types without human intervention; it should cope with obstructions; and it should eventually be a self-contained system with no cables to external computers. The hardware and software architectures, optical distance sensor, and safety problems are described.
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