Development of bulldozer sensor system for estimating the position of blade cutting edge

This paper proposed a bulldozer sensor system for estimating the blade cutting edge position, designed to help bulldozer operators guide the bulldozer blade cutting edge towards a precise position in leveling works. The proposed sensor system consists of two GNSSs, two IMUs, and a position estimation controller. Each sensor and position estimation controller are connected through CAN and RS-232 communications, which facilitate reception of the GNSS's position data and the IMU's angle data as well as the calculation of the bulldozer posture and the blade position. A blade cutting edge position estimation formula is proposed using the frame mapping method reflecting kinematic analysis to calculate the position of the blades. The bulldozer mechanism was modeled, and the effectiveness of the proposed method was verified via simulation to determine accuracy of the estimated positions. The proposed sensor system was then applied to a navigation system to estimate the position of the blade cutting edge after being mounted on an actual bulldozer. The performance of the proposed sensor system was verified by comparing with the positions provided by a commercial GPS.