People of a nervous disposition may want to look away as a 38-tonne Sandvik driverless loader steers through a glittering glass labyrinth… by itself.
The huge machine twists and turns through a maze made of 1,740 square metres of fragile glass, using an array of sensors to ‘see’ the walls. At the centre of the maze, the loader stops with pinpoint precision just inches from a glinting sheet of glass.
“Trust me, it is real,” says Sandvik’s President and CEO Björn Rosengren, who drives the machine to the edge of the labyrinth before switching it into driverless mode.
“We said that we were going to do something different,” Rosengren smiles. “And what could be more fragile than a glass labyrinth? The important thing is to show that our loader can run totally automated.”
“I think it is the first time a loader has done anything like this.” says Jouni Koppanen, Senior Systems Engineer.
Once the Sandvik loader draws to a halt, Rosengren gets behind the wheel. This time, he drives straight through the 500 sheets of glass, bringing the entire maze crashing down in waves of shining splinters to prove that the stunt was real.
The machine navigates using an array of sensors including laser scanners (which staff can watch remotely via monitors), plus odometers and gyroscopes.
Before it navigates a route, an operator drives it manually, then the machine can follow the same route by itself, with no one at the wheel. It follows its path with extreme precision, “like a railway track”, the engineers say.
Laser ‘fences’ ensure that the loader shuts down automatically if anyone walks near it, with a laser ‘tripwire’ automatically turning off the loader if anyone walks into the area.
These technologies mean that workers can stay out of hazardous underground environments, says Jouni Koppanen, Senior Systems Engineer at Sandvik. Instead of driving the machines in dangerous tunnels, workers can monitor them from a control room, Koppanen says.
Sandvik has been a pioneer in automated driving technology for more than 20 years, and its driverless loaders have driven for two million hours without accident, the team says.
In future, loaders will incorporate other environmentally friendly technologies, such as battery power. Rosengren says, “The next step in the industry is electrification. We have already got battery driven loaders in the market today. In the future, we’ll see more loaders and more tracks operating on batteries.”
You can find out more at home.sandvik/letscreate