Teleoperation of the Small Emplacement Excavator

A project is under way at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to convert a military tractor called the Small Emplacement Excavator (SEE) from conventional, manual control to teleoperated control. The SEE is equipped with a backhoe on the back end and multiple blade attachments for the front The SEE is typically used by the US Army for excavation of unexploded ordinance and for battlefield excavation tasks such as entrenchments and foxholes. Because of the risk of personnel injury from explosions during bomb excavation, the US Army is interested in remotely operating the SEE. Excavation of unexploded bombs requires backhoe operations that are very similar to some of the operations envisioned for retrieval of buried radioactive waste at many of the Department of Energy (DOE) sites. Therefore, teleoperation of the SEE is being sponsored jointly by the DOE Environmental Restoration and Waste Management Office of Technology Development, Robotics Technology Development Program, and the Department of Defense (DOD), US Army Program Manager-Ammunition Logistics. After initial development activities at ORNL in 1992, teleoperation of the SEE will be demonstrated at other DOE and DOD sites during FY 1993. The performance of the system will be enhanced through planned follow-on development. The objective of this project is to merge recently developed DOE remote operations technology with proven military heavy equipment in a cost-effective manner. The result will be a remotely operated excavating device that both DOE and DOD can replicate inexpensively and apply widely to hazardous field operations