Towards a Robotic Intervention for On-Land Archaeological Fieldwork in Prehistoric Sites
Résumé
Archaeological activities lead to ancient artifacts discoveries and vestiges. Some excavation operations are both difficult and repetitive: industry 4.0 concepts such as artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced robotics are exploited in the production manufacturing processes to increase performance and could help automate some stages of excavation. This paper deals with the integration of these concepts in the archaeological domain to address specific and tedious tasks. Indeed, archaeological sites are mostly difficult to access places such as open sites and caves, thus making excavation even more challenging, hence the need for robots. The Archaeological Cobotic Explorer (A.C.E.), presented in this paper is a robot that could work alongside humans during archeological surveys. It would be a precise and untiring workforce, capable of locating and retrieving artifacts underground. This project aims to describe the appropriate industry 4.0 concepts that could be exploited in this particular domain and to create a machine, (A.C.E.), built with commercially available materials or replaceable 3D-printed pieces, capable of automating specific stages of the excavation process. Advanced computer aided design and functional prototypes were built and are presented in this paper. © 2024, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.