Autonomy in mobile machines has two sides which have to be covered: autonomous driving and autonomous working. Understanding these complexities and the mechanics behind is the prerequisite to develop machines in an autonomous design. This presentation therefore focusses on the technological complexity behind these two, gives an overview about different connectivity methods and provides a journey across several aspects like architecture considerations and the role of artificial intelligence in working processes. It closes with some ideas about how to solve on the large scale.

What the audience will learn

• Introduction and overview about the complexitiy behind autonomous and mobile machines
• Architecture considerations for autonomous and mobile machines
• The role of artificial intelligence in mobile working processes and a practical example
• Ideas and suggestions on how to solve the technological complexity

TRL are developing a program of trials of connected and automated plant that are intended to take technologies that might be a good idea in principle, and turn them into business as usual solutions in practice. In this session Dr Ianto Guy will discuss some of the highlights and challenges of taking connected and automated plant out into the wild, and will make some recommendations about how we can make the adoption of automation run more smoothly when it encounters the challenges of real world projects.

The talk will focus on how Microsoft uses the Azure Cloud to build a platform to design, test, simulate and manufacture industrial vehicles. The key points will be : Using Azure compute services and AR and VR for computer aided engineering and design. Creating an end to end testing and validation platform for design verifications and vehicle validation. Creating a digital collaboration metaverse platform to reduce the time to market of these vehicles.

What the audience will learn

• Metaverse on Azure
• End to end Engineering collaboration platform
• Augmented and Virtual Reality for design and Manufacture

The last decade of robotic advances in manipulation, sensing, and computing is now enabling the use of robots in less structured environments, such as construction and agriculture. Collaborative robotics offer the opportunity to assist humans in repetitive, hazardous, and strenuous tasks while simultaneously improving safety. While safety standards for automated industrial equipment exist, there is a gap between these legacy standards and the possibilities that state-of-the-art technology is now enabling. Standards bodies and industrial working groups are now driving to close these gaps to enable the safe application of highly automated work machines in these environments. More to be discussed...

What the audience will learn

• Approaches to achieving safe human-robot collaboration while leveraging state-of-the-art technologies in construction environments are going to be discussed
• Safety Standards
• State-of-the-art technology behind the safety

In the off-highway market segment, the trend towards highly automated and autonomous machines that has taken hold in the automotive world is reinforced by the expectation of increasing the efficiency and quality of task execution while minimizing costs. The hardware needs to be robust to withstand harsh conditions while the software must be modular to cover a variety of machine arrangements and environmental operating conditions. These challenges cannot be solved by one company alone. The Autonomous Operation Cluster (AOC) is a cross-market initiative that brings together industry-leading OEMs and technology providers to develop solutions for automated and autonomous mobile machines.

What the audience will learn

• The specific challenges of autonomous operation for off-highway applications
• The highly automated and autonomous application and functions in the off-highway business segment
• Typical system overview: key hardware and software requirements
• Autonomous Operation Cluster: an example on how to collaborate on autonomous operation development
• Outcomes in a concrete off-highway use case

CAN XL is intended as backbone network in embedded and deeply embedded control applications. It is prepared for an easy integration into TCP/IP-based networking architectures. CAN XL provides some new protocol-embedded higher-layer functions such as e.g. the differentiation of several "groups of same concerns", across local network boundaries. Additionally, these groups may share secrets, based on the embedded cybersecurity function CANsec. The presentation will present how CAN XL features ease the life of system integrators in future.

What the audience will learn

• Embedded CAN XL features, assisting setup of backbone networks
• Third generation of CAN, CAN with eXtnded datafield Length
• Scalability of CAN XL

Autonomy is a major characteristic of the next generation of industrial vehicles such as off-road loaders, mining machinery, diggers, tractors, cranes and lift-trucks. It is the key to address skills shortage, implement tasks that go beyond human skills, and increase productivity by 24/7 operation. A major issue with the introduction of autonomy is safety. Autonomy requires a paradigm shift in safety engineering and leads to new safety regulation, standards and requirements. What does this mean for suppliers, OEMs and operators of industrial vehicles?

What the audience will learn

• Why is safety the key to achieve performant autonomy?
• Why is current safety regulation and standardization not sufficient for performant autonomy?
• How can safe and performant autonomy be achieved and how is this reflected in upcoming safety standards?
• What does all this mean for component supplier, vehicle manufacturer and operator?

Those thinking that machine autonomy is a vision of the future need to think again. Autonomy increases the value of machines by enabling greater precision, increasing safety, and boosting productivity. This added value for end users translates to a competitive advantage for OEMs. Autonomous solutions from Danfoss are already in use in many industries. In this session we look into a use case. Where the Danfoss Autonomy Custom Engineering Services (ACES) team worked with an OEM to create a custom application - using the PLUS+1 Autonomy platform and advanced sensor management. We will show how you can do it too.

What the audience will learn

• 1. Detailed information about the use case objective and outcome.
• 2. Practical guidance on how advanced sensors and software algorithms improve the vehicles overall safety, productivity, and precision
• 3. How Danfoss Autonomy enables machine manufacturers to add operator assist and autonomous features to their vehicles, today
• 4. For OEMs who have software engineering in-house, they will find out how the Plus+1 Autonomy software tools facilitate fast integration of steering, drivetrain, braking, remote control, and advanced sensors to custom software applications
• 5. For OEMs who do not have software in-house, they will find out how the ACES team can build complex vehicle applications for them.

Improving the construction process efficiency requires constant data collection from the mobile machinery of the construction site. The efficient use of 3D machine control requires reception of accurate positioning and for example interaction with BIM models. When equipment autonomy is increasing, requirements for machine swarming related connectivity, video feed and even remote control signal is increasing. This presentation describes the findings of a field study; how all this connectivity was implemented in a effective way to a set of construction vehicles?

What the audience will learn

• Solving the essential connectivity requirements
• Combining WiFi and cellular technologies
• Solving cloud access and vehicle to vehicle connecitivity for industrial processes

Bosch Rexroth offers a comprehensive electronic eco-system with hardware, software and telematic services. As next step and as basis on the path towards automation. Bosch Rexroth is developing new microprocessor based high performance controllers for the off-highway market. OEMs can develop their own solutions based on this open, scalable and easy access platform. We will introduce solutions and ideas for a flexible safety ready base software including ROS2 and the integration of application software on different levels of the base software.

What the audience will learn

• - What Bosch Rexroth thinks a modern base software stack for uP based systems should look like
• - How easy different use cases can be covered with such a solution
• - How safety can be handled with the base software
• - Integration example: Perception stack

GNSS is crucial in mining. Vehicles that operate in open-pit mines must be navigated with precision for both safety and efficiency. GNSS satellite signals can be blocked by the walls and topography of a mine. This reduces the reliability and accuracy, and, therefore, the overall useability of GNSS and automated vehicles. Geospatial GNSS Augmentation and forecasting provide comprehensive predictions of GNSS performance considering the topography of the mine, buildings, and line-of-sight determination of satellites as they orbit. Prediction of GNSS performance enables automated trucking, mining, survey, and fleet tracking to avoid areas of poor coverage or augment to improve performance.

What the audience will learn

• Applications of GNSS for industrial vehicles
• Awareness of GNSS/RTK/PPP limitations in mining or urban environments
• Understanding of Geospatial GNSS Augmentation & Forecasting technology
• Applications of Geospatial GNSS Augmentation with existing vehicles
• Improvement of positioning performance using Geospatial GNSS Augmentation

Agriculture production has wide variety across crop types, tasks to be performed, and environments. Autonomous machines can bring enormous benefits in the optimizing of workflows but solutions need to be flexible and adaptable to the variety of jobs in agriculture. JCA’s Autonomous Framework is a set of technology building blocks within a connected architecture that addresses all the key subsystems of autonomous machines and is adaptable to suit the variety of tasks in agriculture. It has been shaped through application of many diverse autonomous machine programs and serves as robust platform on which to develop unique machine autonomy systems.

What the audience will learn

• Overview of the technology that make up the Autonomous Framework – from perception, navigation, mission management to safety
• The benefits of a framework approach to adaptable autonomous systems
• How autonomy brings value to farmers through workflow optimization across tasks
• Real-world examples of the autonomous framework in action across autonomous machine programs

We'll focus on latest technologies and products applied in the most advanced HMIs of the automotive segment based on Preh's intensive product management knowledge. The related features will be analyzed and clustered by challenging them with the requirements of the agricultural and off-highway markets. As you would expect - some will fail to be applicable but others are interesting to support Preh CVs strategy to "do more with less".

What the audience will learn

• Automotive technology trends
• Reference to applicable technology in off-highway segment. Criteria, parameters and consequences.
• Advantages and challenges of latest, applicable technologies
• System outlook

Who will the machine operators of the future be – and what demands will they have regarding their job? What are the psychological foundations for the information processing of humans? What can we learn from cutting edge in-cab technology for passenger cars? What challenges will the evolution of mobile machines add to the current situation? Michael Glunk, Head of the program Driver's Workplace at Continental´s Automotive business segment Commercial and Special Vehicles looks deep into the preconditions that define the operator´s workplace of the future. Based on his findings, he casts a spotlight on some of the technologies we will likely see.

What the audience will learn

• the psychological foundations for the information processing of humans
• innovations adapted from cutting-edge passenger car technology
• the expectations of future, more demanding job starters regarding their work
• pressure to increase a machine´s efficiency and value creation

Gone are the days when the complete system was be done by a single developer and even a single company, instead we rely on systems from 3rd party providers, sometimes resulting in a vehicle cabin with a plethora of diverse displays and systems. At the same time, there is a drive towards better user experiences, operator support systems and productivity tools that can be improved over the machine lifetime. In this speech we will look into approaches for computation hardware and software that can enable realization of new and coming system functionality to realize homogenous and upgradeable operator environments.

What the audience will learn

• A good user interaction for safe and effective operation
• How a good software framework can enable integration of HMI functionality on displays for a homogenous experience.
• Hardware and software integration that enables new functionalllity, interaction and development speed.

Software: What's involved in creating your own safety function block? The advent of the Machine Product Regulation brings a clear signal of what software must comply with in a safety application. During the Safety Engineering Event, we will be happy to explain the steps that can be followed to certify a homemade safety function block so that the software is equivalent to a safety component. Consider crane construction, for example, where we often see the Rated Capacity Limiter being created in an Excel to put all the numbers together. How do you certify safety a function block? How is it reported and documented?

What the audience will learn

• Is there a safe crane? With certified software from the RCL (Rated Capacity Limiter)?
• How many Cranes are really safe now? Particularly on the software side.
• Excavators and aerial work platforms on the track must comply with safe software. Is your software really safe?
• How do you make an AGV's navigation software really safe? What steps should you go through?
• What are the steps to follow when creating a Software safety function block in EN-IEC-61508?

Bird’s eye view systems are more and more present. High resolution IP-cameras with large viewing angle are mounted around the vehicle and send their image to a control unit, which calculates the bird’s eye view image of the vehicle’s environment top view. This image is then presented to the driver on a display in the cabin. Graf-Syteco has now integrated this functionality into operating and control devices which show this image on the display parallel to the visualization to reduce the number of displays in the cabin. Additionally, this image is forwarded to an artificial intelligence which is able to detect people and objects in the near environment of the machine and warn the operator with an optical and acoustic signal. Even a machine stop is thinkable. Like an automatic distance cruise control this new assistant system can help to avoid accidents and makes construction sites a bit safer.

What the audience will learn

• With the bird’s eye image on the display the machine operator has the environment in view at any time
• The artificial intelligence recognizes people and objects and issue a warning signal when it predicts that people will enter a dangerous zone soon
• The combination of bird’s eye view and AI creates an assistant system which enables the operator, who is mostly concentrated on his work, to react early enough to avoid accidents

Recent advances in hardware capacity along with the breakthrough of deep learning opened a new era for vision applications applied to the industry, going from safety to productivity. In the presentation we will zoom in on safety applications thanks to pedestrian detection around the vehicle: the current state of the art, the challenges and the trends for the following years. The presentation will go beyond pedestrian detection to explore the spectrum of features offered to the industrial vehicle thanks to the vision technology

What the audience will learn

• Pedestrian detection using embedded vision technology for industrial vehicle
• Benchmark of the current solutions
• Pedestrian detection challenges
• Trends in vision technology in the upcoming years

Mobile cooling of cabins, cargo areas, batteries and EV systems represents a significant percentage of the energy consumed in modern vehicles and machinery. This impacts on the overall carbon footprint of any specific vehicle or machine. This presentation will examine the HVAC/R systems needed to undertake these tasks and examine them from a refrigerant flow perspective, and with an emphasis on their implications for cabin design, and operator safety and comfort. The choice of refrigerant and how each is used has significant impact on the environmental and human safety outcomes when these systems are operated. Specific attention will be given to techniques to reduce leakage, improve performance and increase life cycles of complete HVAC/R systems.

What the audience will learn

• How to design and set up an efficient refrigeration circuit
• Techniques to achieve low refrigerant gas leakage in high performance systems
• Design parameters to ensure adequate flow of refrigerant in systems to enhance performance and the life cycles of equipment
• Implementing specific design and system installation parameters to ensure adequate flow of lubricants in systems
• Control of thermal parameters, pressure, and temperature in modern compressors for large electric vehicles and machinery

In this introduction, Martijn will set the stage for this session by describing the THEIA-XR project, and how XR impacts and benefits the interaction between user and machine as demonstrated in the following presentations and panel discussion. Martijn will moderate the session.

This Presentation reports on our advanced prototyping framework for augmenting multimodal human-machine interaction (HMI). The framework considers new tools for developing advanced interaction technology and functionalities, their perception, and communication with humans. It provides an interactive and flexible environment to test and examine interaction concepts and the roles of future operators. Implementing capable prototyping in early phases of product development is essential in novel HMI to accelerate development processes and reduce uncertainties regarding autonomous machines, making them easy to apply in HMI development processes in the industry. We showcase some of our existing prototypes and give an outlook for our XR-Prototypes in the TheiaXR-project that will be designed to give insights into the design of user interfaces for cyber-physical systems across all industrial domains.

What the audience will learn

• What makes XR-Prototyping so special?
• What and how do we combine tools to achieve immersive and interactive prototypes with low setup efforts?
• How do we effectively use prototyping for novel XR-HMI?

The presentation will briefly describe and explain the main challenge when using AR in outdoor environments, which is accurate registration of content to the real world. An affordable solution to perform mobile handheld AR will be presented, together with a use-case to highlight underground infrastructure on road surfaces. Based on the setup in TheiaXR, several scenarios to use head-worn, handheld and projector based options to present relevant content to the operator will be presented.

What the audience will learn

• Illustration of basic registration challenge to make outdoor AR actually work
• Example of affordable outdoor registration setup for mobile use
• Use-case example to perform spray-marking of underground infrastructure on normal roads
• Outlook to use XR technology in TheiaXR

This presentation will introduce how to exploit XR in novel cabin concepts and operator support. There will be two use cases of designing and evaluating the novel cabin concept with XR features with end-user. The use cases are 1) mining machine, and 2) tram. Also, future implementation of XR supported remote operation will be introduced. At the end of the presentation the EuroXR Association will be introduced and with details of how to exploit it in XR dissemination.

What the audience will learn

• How to use XR for novel cabin concept design
• Added value of XR in novel concepts evaluation
• Future plans of using XR in remote operations
• How to exploit EuroXR association in XR dissemination

AR can be used to provide operators with real-time visualization of important information, such as container positions and weight distribution. This can help operators make more informed decisions and work more efficiently and safely. VR and AR can be used to customize the user interface of container-handling machines to meet the specific needs of individual operators. VR and AR visualizations can help operators and maintenance teams monitor machine performance and identify potential issues before they become major problems. AR can be used to provide remote assistance to operators in the field. VR can be used to provide simulation-based training to operators, allowing them to practice operating the machines in a realistic virtual environment.

What the audience will learn

• Improve situational awareness of operators -> Improved productivity and safety
• Improve UX of the machine’s HMI
• Support maintenance persons remotely
• Help to maintain machines correctly
• Train employees without real machines