Robotics: Science and Systems XXII

High Precision Hydraulic Excavator Control for Heavy Duty Grading

Lennart Werner, Pol Eyschen, Sean Costello, Andrei Cramariuc, Marco Hutter

Abstract:

High-precision heavy-duty grading is a common step in earthworks, traditionally carried out manually by skilled operators. Removing a significant amount of material while achieving a high-precision surface requires substantial machine-specific experience. Different hydraulic architectures react differently to operator inputs and soil interaction forces, which makes generalizable controllers challenging. In this paper, we present an autonomous controller that achieves high-precision grading at expert-operator speed on Load Sensing and Negative Flow Control machines alike. We split our controller into two parts: (1) a hydraulic-aware low-level loop that is hydraulic architecture-specific and (2) a path-tracking layer that coordinates joint motions and responses. Through a calibration process, our technique is applicable to load-sensing and negative-flow-control machinery. To showcase its versatility, we benchmark our approach on two excavators with different hydraulics and compare it against a commercial state-of-the-art solution. Our technique (RMSE 1.8cm) outperforms the commercial solution (RMSE 4.7cm) in precision by a factor of x2.6 and improves machine usage by leveraging the maximum function pressure, as opposed to commercial solutions that stall prematurely.

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Bibtex:

  
@INPROCEEDINGS{WernerL-RSS-26, 
    AUTHOR    = {Lennart Werner AND Pol Eyschen AND Sean Costello AND Andrei Cramariuc AND Marco Hutter}, 
    TITLE     = {{High Precision Hydraulic Excavator Control for Heavy Duty Grading}}, 
    BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of Robotics: Science and Systems}, 
    YEAR      = {2026}, 
    ADDRESS   = {Sydney, Australia}, 
    MONTH     = {July}, 
    DOI       = {10.15607/RSS.2026.XXII.111} 
}