Karl-Erik Årzen at Automatic Control in Lund.

Sponsoring organization Title and subtitle Bucket and Vehicle Oscillation Damping for a Wheel Loader (Dämpning av svängningar för en hjullastare) A wheel loader is a tractor-like universal working machine with a bucket in the front which can be used for digging, loading and transporting different type of material. A driver of such a vehicle needs a lot of training and experience before he can handle the vehicle in a safe and efficient way. In order to reduce these demands on the driver, the vehicle should be made more autonomous. As a first step in this direction, inertial bucket stabilization is considered in this thesis. When transporting a load on uneven terrain the bucket with the load starts to oscillate together with the whole vehicle. These oscillations could cause load loss, or worse, cause fragile load to break. The oscillations of the vehicle are also uncomfortable for the driver. Normally the driver has to manually avoid these problems by driving slower or choosing another route and thus needs to have experience in these situations. In the thesis it is investigated if the oscillations of the bucket and vehicle itself can be compensated for by moving the boom where the bucket is mounted. Due to economical reasons the compensation should be achieved by controlling the already available hydraulic system on the wheel loader