POWER ELECTRONICS
MY
olvo CE is investing heavily in autonomous technology, and last year completed a successful
WAY IS
project at Skanska’s Vikan Kross cement quarry near Gothenburg, Sweden. Volvo’s Ulrich Faß, manager Emerging Technologies, explains what was learned from this: “It was very benefi cial to get a customer on board early to test concepts. The ‘Concept Lab’ idea with selected customers to see what is feasible is very diff erent to how machines used to be developed in the past. Just developing products and then showing customers very late on won’t work with the rapid pace of
OFF- HIGHWAY V
change we have today. It’s an iterative process and we need regular feedback from customers to keep development moving quickly and in the right direction.” Fast-forward to today and there is an ongoing project at Eskilstuna with Telia and Ericsson, where the initial designs have been handed over to the product development team to determine how to commercialise what has been learned so far.
The machine at the heart of the
research is the HX2. Faß explains, “HX2 was a proof of concept – much of what we learned will fi nd its way into commercial products in the future. We
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There is much talk in the media about driverless cars, but when it comes to autonomous vehicles the off-highway, construction and mining industries have been working quietly on the technology for decades
need to simplify, so instead of merely using the latest tech we wanted to start using commercial tech that’s more widely available and cheaper. The car industry’s autonomous research will help to make componentry more aff ordable. “Construction and mining is at the
forefront with the automotive industry when it comes to autonomy – off -road equipment is leading in some domains and benefi ts from the economics of scale in the car and truck industry. Mines and construction sites are not part of the public space – they have used these sensors for many years to cope with their environment – so our
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