
Driving From Italy To China ... With No Driver  - wglb
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128639246&ft=1&f=1004
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edfvbrfgb
I work on these systems in mining. With a human driver a mine car is limited
to 12-20kmh with one vehicle in each 100m block for safety, on an automated
level with no people present there are no limits. We can do 60km/h with
vehicles only a couple of metres apart - shifting 10x as much material more
cheaply and safely.

In australia there are mines with all the 300ton haul trucks completely
automated - driving from the face to the crusher and back with no humans.
Never speeding, never taking a corner too quickly, never over accelerating or
over braking. The savings in tire wear alone are enormous.

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trafficlight
That's amazing. Where can I read more about this?

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edfvbrfgb
[http://www2.sandvik.com/sandvik/0120/Internet/Global/S003713...](http://www2.sandvik.com/sandvik/0120/Internet/Global/S003713.nsf/Alldocs/22E4D21836AF0147C22572B2002C3F2F)

<http://www.mining-technology.com/features/feature41780/>

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georgecmu
_AutoMine systems are currently operating at Codelco's El Teniente Mine in
Chile (since June 2004), Inmet Mining's Pyhäsalmi Mine in Finland (since
January 2005), De Beers' Finsch Mine in South Africa (since August 2005) and
Williams Mine in Canada (June 2007). A system is also installed in Sandvik's
Test Mine in Tampere, Finland, which is used as a platform for developing and
testing future system developments and for demonstration purposes._

Interesting. Do you guys rely on GPS with corrections alone or do you use
active sensing? I imagine ladar is not that great in dusty conditions?

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edfvbrfgb
GPS tends not to work terribly well 1000m underground.

They use a combination of laser scanners following the contours of the wall
and triangulating from fixed reflective prisms. Sometimes around
crushers/trains you use buried electric cables or magnets for precise sensing.

Surface mining uses GPS and lasers, in the bottom of an open pit GPS requires
a bunch of expensive repeater stations because of the poor sky view.

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georgecmu
I didn't realize this was underground mining. So, you're really working on
driverless trains, not cars or trucks, correct?

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anamax
> I didn't realize this was underground mining. So, you're really working on
> driverless trains, not cars or trucks, correct?

Why would one think that "underground" implies trains?

Trains require tracks. Roads are less precise and have cheaper intersections.

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edfvbrfgb
They are diesel powered trucks which navigate by following the wall profile -
slightly confusingly they are often called 'trams' because moving muck
underground is called 'tramming' from the original medieval mine railways!

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georgecmu
So that brings me to my original question -- what kind of sensing do you use
on these trams, both to follow the walls and to detect obstacles?

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edfvbrfgb
Time of flight laser scanners (LIDAR). Scanners on each side of the truck
measure the shape of the wall. you drive the truck down the tunnel once (in
one system) it stores a map of the wall shape and then follows the same shape
to keep the same distance form the walls.

Another laser scanner checks the tunnel ahead (and behind) for obstacles,
other trucks, people, rockfalls etc.

On some systems a spinning laser on the top hits fixed prism reflectors with
known position on the roof and walls, it constantly resects it's position from
this.

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edfvbrfgb
One other small concern - are any of the programmers behind this from Rome?

Because if the AI on this system is designed by Roman drivers it might be
safer for everyone to move out of Asia for the duration of the trip.

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edfvbrfgb
It's not racist - even people from Milan are scared of Roman drivers !

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chrischen
Good luck when they get to the streets of china. If they can auto drive
through that then it's ready for anything...

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brianto2010
Heh... reminds me of éX-Driver (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-
Driver#Overview>). I think the idea has potential, but I don't think it will
be _safely_ feasible.

> " _A test drive off campus on Thursday illustrates the many hazards. A
> tractor trailer blocked visibility entering a busy traffic circle, forcing
> the lead vehicle to inch tentatively into oncoming cars. When it did find a
> break, there wasn't enough time for the second vehicle to follow before
> another car inserted itself between them, cutting off communication_ "

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thomasfl
A stressed out driver stuck in a traffic jam on the highway would probably in
many cases be many times safer with automatic car control than driving
manually.

It can be extremely stressful when you're stuck in a traffic jam and have to
pick a kid in kindergarten.

