OfF Highway
Autonomy Kicks Up Some Dust “You have to push subsystem automation so far and make these machines so capable of monitoring their health, their performance, that along the way you can deliver these back to the customers as simplifications.” - Brett McClelland, CNH industrial
Machines that move, haul and plough earth can capitalise on autonomous systems today via increased safety and productivity in the field and significant cost savings writes Ryan Gehm.
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utonomous operation for onhighway commercial vehicles has grabbed headlines and public attention, rightfully so since these haulers increasingly will share the roads with passenger vehicles. But there is a lot of interesting new core work occurring in the off-highway autonomy space as well, according to Brendan Chan, Chief Engineer of unmanned systems and active safety at Oshkosh Corp. “There’s the hub-to-hub stuff that
everyone’s been talking about. There’s also a lot of geofences, low-speed applications where autonomy could be very useful and a very good value,” Chan said at the 2020 SAE COMVEC Digital Summit. Vehicles for yard manoeuvring is one such application. Mining and agriculture are two off-highway sectors where automated systems have proven effective and adoption is growing. Controlled environments and private property where regulations are less restrictive
are driving factors. “The military is interested in autonomous systems as well, primarily as force multipliers and for occupant safety,” said Chan. “There is quite a lot of synergy in the autonomy space although the application may be different. It all boils down to the use case and the operational design domain,” he added. Value proposition What the mining sector is lacking, despite working on autonomy for the last 15 to
Commercial Vehicle www.commercialvehicle.in | September 2021
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