usually because it’s been determined there’s a hardware issue and
we know exactly what we’re getting into before we go.”
While fully autonomous vehicles have been tested at oilsands
operations and mining sites, they’re not yet commonplace on road
building projects. Birch says autonomous vehicles will eventually be
used on road building sites, but the concern just now is how to ensure
workers are safe.
Workers on a road building site could be outfitted with sensors
so they’re detected by the vehicles, he notes, but the problem is that
such sites are busy places and people often wander onto them.
“You’ve got third-party trucking companies that are trucking in
material. It’s also not in the middle of nowhere so you can’t keep the
general public out. You try to keep them out, but on a highway project,
for example, you can’t be sure that someone’s not going to walk
onto the site somewhere.”
While drones are already in use on road building sites to provide
engineers with an overview of a project, Birch envisions the
day when robots, along with augmented and virtual reality, become
common tools.
Sometime in the future, he says, an architect will be able to hold
up a smartphone and use augmented reality technology to get an
image of what a building might look like on a site before it’s built.
“If you go on a site you could hold up your phone and say, ‘Oh,
that’s where that building is going,’” he said.
Exoskeletons for workers are also in the cards, he says.
“You’ll be able to put on this exoskeleton and lift 50 pounds with
one finger. Those are the technologies that are being used in the industry
these days and that’s where the puck is going.”
Mohammed, meanwhile, figures that telematics – whereby computers
and sensors in the heavy equipment receive and send information
that can be used to improve operations – is destined
to expand.
Data from an excavator, for example, could provide information
on how many loads were transferred and number of kilometres that
were driven, which could lead to a larger bucket being installed so
the machine can carry a bigger load and make fewer trips, or take a
shorter route to save fuel.
“At one time, we would collect information and all these data
points from how the cycle times occurred for hauling and dumping
and we analyzed that manually, but now the computers can do
all that for us.”
This story originally appeared in The Journal of Commerce
on June 24, 2019. It is republished with permission.
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