LOAD & HAUL
offers more redundancy and is easier to handle.”
THINKING ON THE BRINK All that sensor data needs interpretation. Torbjörn Martinsson is a research engineer in Volvo’s Emerging Technologies Team, Sweden. Of processing power, he says, “Machine learning is very popular and has a high resource demand – many teraflops/second. Tis is moving very fast. 100 teraflops are available now – and it’s affordable. Silicon manufacturers will have a mammal’s thinking capability within a couple of years (neuromorphic processing).” So which is better, having the brain on-
board or acting separately, joined by a grid? Martinsson observes, “5G and networking gives us the possibility to be grid-based, instead of onboard. But it’s too vulnerable for functional safety making it impossible to guarantee 100% safety. So, the mix will be very important. We want grid sharing of data but the on-board safety aspect will be crucial for redundancy if the grid fails.
Object detection sensors
We may change our view on this in the future.
“5G seems like the technology we need, the research shows us this is enough, and Sweden is leading with this. It offers a very small latency, the data moves quickly. Data needs to arrive in the right order and be stable, fast and predictable, which is essential for remote control. “WLAN should be a good alternative to
5G. TSN is a comms tech and this looks very interesting. TSN I (a time sensitive network) means you know exactly when you are going to get things with microseconds to get data. Tere are several interesting possibilities, it’s all being researched at the moment.” Where does AI fit into this? Martinsson
says, ‘It’s a very wide spectrum, from a simple driver controller, to act like human intelligence (how do I do something?) to the most complex. We will use AI on several levels from the very simple to bashing big data. Machine learning is part of AI – it’s just much bigger.
“We have proved we can have an autonomous machine that digs on its own, and learns how to do it better. Reinforced learning will become an important factor, but we need to ensure it is safe. You need the software to understand if it is doing a good job; this is immature now. We need to define what ‘good’ looks like.”
THE POWER AND THE GLORY Martinsson sees electrification as crucial for the growth in automation. “An electric drive is better for autonomy as there are fewer moving parts. Tere is industry- wide interest in solid-state technology for the powerpacks. We’re looking into this. It’s promising but still early. With charging, it’s moving rapidly, and with regeneration it is easier to optimise with autonomous – it’s harder with humans and as we don’t want to disturb the operator in their work. Autonomous machines don’t mind. “Maintenance is also easier. An automated machine knows what it’s done, how it’s done it and what it must do, and maintenance is predictable. Humans use machines in a non-deterministic way: machines use machines predictably.”
ON TRACK WITH CATERPILLAR Caterpillar has been involved with autonomy research for decades. Michael Murphy, chief engineer, Mining Technology, is a member of Caterpillar’s original team that developed autonomous mining vehicles, and he offers a quick history lesson: “We started collaborating with Carnegie Mellon University more than 30 years ago, working on GPS for off-road machines – when there were very few satellites in the sky. We knew that this technology would be key to developing autonomous machine capabilities. In fact, we showed our first use of high-precision GPS on our Terrain product at MINExpo in 1996, 23 years ago. We also broadcast live to MINExpo 1996 an autonomous truck operating at our Tucson Proving Grounds. “At the time, however, the mining
industry was not ready for autonomous machines, and the technology needed further development. In 1998 we went to work creating the building blocks - the core technologies -needed for autonomy. We launched Terrain to give mining operators productivity information for shovels, drills, wheel loaders and dozers. And we continued to build on monitoring
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