POWER ELECTRONICS
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 tera ops/ second. It is moving very fast. 100 tera ops 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 onboard 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 onboard safety aspect will be crucial for redundancy if the grid fails. 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 (time sensitive network) is a comms tech and this
looks very interesting. TSN means you know exactly when you are going to get things with microseconds to get data. There 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. There 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 operators 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. We also broadcast live to 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 machine health onboard with Cat VIMS, a key building block for autonomy. With no operator onboard, we needed to be able to remotely monitor and understand any problems developing with machines.” The DARPA (Defence Advanced
These Cat 793F CMD wagons are working autonomously 16
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Research Projects Agency) Challenges provided a step change for autonomy. “We partnered with Carnegie Mellon to sponsor the award-winning ‘Boss’, an autonomous Chevrolet Tahoe, that won first place in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge,” Murphy says. “We were the first company to leverage the technology from the DARPA Challenges. Since then, we believe our machines have travelled twice as many miles as any automotive company’s autonomous vehicles.”
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