BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, part 3
GIM Robotics is a proud member of three new Business Finland funded projects.
INFRA CONSTRUCTION MACHINE GROUP AIMS TO SAVE ENERGY AND IMPROVE PERFORMANCE
As stated in our two previous posts, in 2022 GIM Robotics joined in three national Business Finland funded projects: FUTURA, SANTTU and SWARM. These ambitious construction, mining, cargo handling and forestry related mobile machinery projects include each a mixed bag of research topics from the list of common keywords including digital twins, AI, operator assistive systems, autonomy, and electrification. All three projects have one common denominator. Instead of just navigating there and back, these machines do some actual work which requires some sort of a manipulator, or as it can be called it in this context, a boom.
The last post in our Boom-Boom-Boom trilogy presents the SWARM project, which focuses on having multiple heavy construction machines cooperating on various infrastructure related operations. The Autonomous Low-Emission Swarm of Infra Construction Machinery project (SWARM) is dedicated to researching and developing remote and autonomic control systems for heavy construction equipment. The machine group will consist of a bulldozer, an excavator, and a roller. A smart excavator is already working autonomously in the Oulu test site and during the project similarly smart bulldozer and roller will be created, tested, and integrated to the autonomous and unmanned work machine group.
SWARM - THE OBJECTIVES
Global climate crisis has emphasized the importance of cutting down the emissions of heavy machinery through electrification. Equally important is to integrate all relevant technological advances into the future machine systems. Autonomous and semi-autonomous cooperative machines can optimize various parts of their working cycles including navigation and earth moving and processing operations. When given the infrastructure building information model (BIM), these machines can create considerable savings through highly accurate and speedy operations, in addition to the obvious personnel reductions thanks to the high level of autonomy and multi-machine operations.
SWARM - THE FACTS
Run by University of Oulu’s Professor Rauno Heikkilä, this five-million-euro two-year (2022-2024) project includes multiple industry partners: Nokia, Novatron, Satel, Destia, Noptel, Sisu, Sensible4, GIM Robotics and Sandvik. Once again, GIM Robotics is thrilled to be among some of the Finnish flagship companies in their quest to increase the efficiency of their heavy equipment or relevant subsystems.
You can read more about SWARM project from here:
MEMORIES FROM COE-GIM'S FUTURE WORKSITE PROJECT
Based on our long history from the Helsinki University of Technology’s (Aalto University since 2010), Automation Technology Laboratory since 1985 and especially during our Academy of Finland’s Centre of Excellence of Generic Intelligent Machines period (2008 – 2013), the senior staff of GIM Robotics has been working actively with multi-machine concept in several domains, but most importantly with outdoor working machines under the concept of Future Worksite (Suomela et al., 2007), (Saarinen et al., 2011). Future Worksite concept studied heterogenous infra construction working machines, human-machine interactions, and shared situational awareness, teleoperated, semi-autonomous and autonomous operations, simulated, augmented reality and physical multi-machines demonstrations. It almost feels like this Business Finland funded SWARM project is taking us back to our roots.
REFERENCES
Suomela, Jussi, Saarinen, Jari, Halme, Aarne, Vilenius, Matti & Huhtala, Kalevi. (2007). GIM, Towards the Future Worksite. IFAC Proceedings Volumes. 40. 318-323. 10.3182/20070903-3-FR-2921.00055.
Saarinen, Jari, Suomela, Jussi, & Halme, Aarne. (2011). The concept of Future Worksite – Towards teamwork-centered field robotic systems. In 18th IFAC World Congress, Milano, 28 August 2011 – 2 September 2011 (pp. 14952-14957)
