Research on the automation of many types of construction equipment, including motor graders, is being actively conducted. In a motor grader cabin, the operator has difficulty observing the working environment because of a constructed field of view. Thus, workers rely on their experience and senses. Further, the working environment of the blade must be observed, and a control algorithm should be created to enable autonomous operation. In this study, a blade rotation control strategy considering the soil distribution was proposed. First, a co-simulation environment was constructed using RecurDyn for multibody dynamics analysis and EDEM for discrete element method simulation, and simulations were performed to determine the correlation between soil distribution and the blade rotation angle. Work quality and blade load were analyzed according to the simulation results. The optimal blade rotation angle according to soil distribution was obtained to develop the strategy for autonomous flattening and scattering work. The proposed control strategy was implemented in a 1/4 full-scale motor grader experimental setup. An experiment to evaluate work quality was conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The experimental results indicated that the proposed strategy effectively performed scattering work.

This study presents the development of a magnetostrictive control rod position indicator (Mag-CRPI) for improving safety of nuclear power generation. Mag-CRPI principle is based on two magnetostrictive effects: The Wiedemann effect and the Villari effect. The position may be estimated by multiplying time-of-flight (TOF) of the elastic wave from the cursor magnet to the sensing coil, and a sound speed of the magnetostrictive wire. A Mag-CRPI prototype has been designed and built. Experiments are conducted to characterize the Mag-CRPI. Change of the TOF is obtained with cursor magnet movement interval of 100 ㎜. Averaged position error is estimated to be 0.002m over the entire measuring length. Based on experimental results, the performance of Mag-CRPI is validated, thereby confirming feasibility of a nuclear reactor-internal control rod.