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The World's Heaviest Robot
Roland Piquepaille writes "This distinction goes to a future autonomous version of the 700-tons Caterpillar mining truck. In this article, Discovery News reports that Caterpillar engineers and computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to develop this autonomous truck. Japan-based Komatsu has already delivered autonomous mining trucks to its customers, but these are smaller than the Caterpillar ones. Both companies are transforming their trucks into 'robots' for three reasons. Improvements in safety, efficiency and productivity will reduce costs and increase availability."
You'll be hearing from Shampoo's lawyers.
Not that I think there's a huge chance that things will go wrong with, but think of how awesomely cool it would go wrong if it did.
I would say the distinction would go to Australia's driverless ore trains when commissioned in 2013.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Port_Hedland,_Western_Australia.jpg
(Yeah I know the pic is of a drivered BHP rather than Rio train... but it does give you an idea of the scale).
The argument for driverless is that because they take the best part of a day to perform an emergency stop, the family car stalled on the crossing is going to be pulverised regardless of the skill of a human operator. The largest fragment left over from these collisions is usually a few inches in size. Fortunately they don't happen that often.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
Which Autobot was a dumptruck?
An unmanned spacecraft when launched is "fully autonomous" and there are a number that are bigger than 700 metric tons.
Titan IVB - 943 tons
Delta IV - up to 733 tons
Saturn V (there were 3 unmanned launches) - 3000 tons
he's my brobot.
Sorry.
I live in Western Australia, where Rio Tinto are developing their autonomous mining equipment. My old man is employed by Rio as a radio techie and as such he has a small part to play in the development of their autonomous trucks. I'm posting anonymously as I don't want any of these remarks getting him in trouble.
The basic model relies on a single central system coordinating all the trucks as they move about. There have been a lot of kinks to do with radio lines of sight. Mine sites where the principal ore body is ferrous tend not to be very friendly to radio transmission. The actual driving of the trucks is not hugely complicated as the routes are identical for every run and GPS systems make it easy to align a truck with the road. It's not like navigating a desert track or urban landscape.
Rio are also working on automating their trains. Alongside BHP, Rio has one of the largest fully private rail networks in the world. The two mining giants run the largest freight trains anywhere -- several kilometres long with tens of thousands of tons of iron ore. That may change as the two mining giants are being forced to open their networks to junior mining companies -- it looks easy on paper but railway systems are extremely complicated and finely balanced systems.
The scale of the mining efforts in the Pilbara boggle the mind. They are utterly vast. Whole mountains made of rust are being excavated, crushed and then shipped to Japan and China. The pace is frenetic. Rio and BHP can't find enough workers and that has caused costs to explode, which is part of why they are turning to automation. But really it's about throughput: an autonomous truck doesn't need lunch breaks, delays for shift change or the like. Every minute counts.
Rio have been more forward-looking than BHP in this department, so it may not last as BHP are trying to carry out a hostile takeover at the moment.
It's Megaweapon!
http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Megaweapon
Simon ;)
This isn't all that new...I submitted a story to Slashdot about a fully autonomous/tele-operated underground mine back in 2001! (Disclaimer, I was one of the engineers on the project.)
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/01/30/1552243.shtml
The Cat 797 mining truck actually hauls 400 tons, not 240 as stated in the article. The 240 ton truck is the 793.
Although the vehicle mentioned in the article is not a DARPA challenge setup, there was one competitor in the DARPA challenge that would be almost as intimidating if it went rogue:
- TerraMax
Although the vehicle has had it's share of buggy moments, it's has done surprising well, especially considering it's sheer size.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Since no one has said it yet, "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these"...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
...by checking this video.
Or this video of a smaller 793, but I sure hope that is not an autonomous kill-bot.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
That's about how it goes
The biggest problem with the driverless Komatsu's on the mine sites are the ruts they cause on the dirt mine 'roads'. When you have 18 tippers weighing 500+ ton rolling on the exact same pair of tyre treads once a minute 24x7, the ruts get gouged pretty deep, pretty quick. A human driver will do his or her best to avoid ruts as he or she drives around every small (and large!) rock pile on the road as it makes for a smoother ride, especially when all you want to do is get it from the bottom of the pit to the top as many times as directed for your 8 hour shift.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect