Advances in Automation for CNH Construction Vehicles
Two new automated systems, Click&Dig and Perception, are being introduced on CASE Construction Equipment’s wheel loaders to improve productivity and safety.
At CNH’s CASE Construction Equipment plant in Lecce, southern Italy, a team of young engineers are working toward a long-term goal of creating fully autonomous construction vehicles. The team, led by Advanced Electronics Manager Andrea Gravili, this year reaches a milestone, with two important automated functions coming to the market.
They are Click&Dig, which has three automated processes for wheel loaders — AutoDig, AutoDump and AutoMetering — and Perception, an AI-based system of cameras and sensors that detects obstacles and people around the vehicle to improve safety and support the operator’s decision-making.
Perception, CNH’s sensing system, was trained using AI to recognize different types of obstacles typically found on a construction site, from piles of rocks to other vehicles to people, says Gravili. Perception does not rely only on what it can ‘see’. “When the system is looking behind the vehicle, it can recognize or detect obstacles using both a camera and a radar,” he explains. “If there is dust on the camera, we can rely on the radar.” The operator is then alerted to press the brake.
The purpose of the advanced electronics team’s work is not to replace operators, according to Antonio Venezia, Director of Electronics for Construction Equipment at CNH. “I don’t spend eight hours a day every day in my car, but operators spend eight hours a day working in our vehicles,” he says. “The most important part of our job is to help them do their jobs better, in a more comfortable way.”
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