Identification of material excavation difficulty and uncertainty analysis based on Bayesian deep learning

• Published in: Journal of industrial information integration 2024-11, Vol.42, p.100728, Article 100728
• Main Authors: Li, Shijiang, Wang, Shaojie, Chen, Xiu, Zhou, Gongxi, Hou, Liang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bayesian deep learning; Excavator; Material excavation difficulty; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 2452-414X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jii.2024.100728

•Proposed a method for identifying material excavation difficulty based on a Bayesian deep learning framework with uncertainty.•Developed a scheme for uncertainty decomposition to analyze the sources of aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty.•Determined the input features for the material excavation difficulty identification model through mechanistic analysis.•Verified the performance of the model through comparative experiments. Accurately assessing the difficulty of material excavation is crucial for reducing excavator energy consumption, ensuring operational safety, and optimizing excavator efficiency. Addressing the challenges of uncertain and difficult-to-judge excavation conditions for underground materials, this paper proposes a Bayesian deep learning-based method that integrates excavation process data to identify excavation difficulty. Firstly, we constructed a deep learning model based on Bayesian theory and decomposed the uncertainty of the identification results into aleatory uncertainty and epistemic uncertainty. Next, through a mechanistic analysis of the interaction between materials and the excavator bucket during excavation, we identified the input features for the model. Finally, we validated the effectiveness of the method through experiments. The results show that the proposed method not only accurately identifies the excavation difficulty of the material but also quantifies and decomposes the uncertainty of the identification results, demonstrating both theoretical significance and practical application value.