Issues in obstacle detection for autonomous mining and construction vehicles

This paper discusses a Dumber of key issues for the development of robust, obstacle detection systems for autonomous mining and construction vehicles. A taxonomy of obstacle detection systems is described; An overview of the state-of- the-art in obstacle detection for outdoor autonomous vehicles is presented with their applicability to the mining and construction environments noted. The issue of so-called fail-safe obstacle detection is then discussed. Finally, we describe the development of an obstacle detection system for a mining vehicle.

Rear end structural crashworthiness of unitized construction vehicles, baseline tests. Final report. (Part I).

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.

Rear end structural crashworthiness of unitized construction vehicles - summary report. Final report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.

Experimental evaluation of a portable energy absorbing system for highway service vehicles. Final report for phase II.

Connecticut Department of Transportation, Bureau of Planning and Research, Wethersfield

Noise abatement techniques for construction equipment. Final report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Office of Research and Development, Washington, D.C.

Guilherme de La Penha: uma história do seu itinerário intelectual em três dimensões

This study focuses on the central Brazilian historiography of science, focusing specifically on the life and work of a contemporaneous mathematician-physicist, and becomes part of the set of research results that investigate, organize and describe personal, intellectual and professional itineraries of Brazilian scientists and educators. The theme chosen for the study ran from seminars on Mathematics in Pará and is up to organize and describe the life history, education, professional experience and scientific production of William Mauricio Souza Marcos de La Penha (Guilherme de La Penha), considering their academic, professional and intellectual life history, so that their academic and intellectual production be spread over the Brazilian scientific and academic community. We adopted the historical research as theoretical and methodological base for the development of this study, rising arguments about the profile of Guilherme de La Penha to characterize him as a multiskill intellectual and to reveal that his thoughts about science, technology, training scientists and educators were in accordance with their writings and their professional practice in order to build a first story about the life and work of William de La Penha. In this sense, we took the theoretical aspects related to historical research, biographies, intellectual itineraries, files and inventories as sources and historical construction vehicles in order to point out the essential elements to form a profile of the transdisciplinary intellectual historians, ie a profile scientist who carries out the research, management and administration, as well as a committed educator to the on-going training and forming process. The results pointed in different directions, among which we highlight the creation of Seção Guilherme de La Penha at Universidade da Amazonia, producing several articles about the life and work of William de La Penha presented at national and international conferences and the proposal for documentary displays which could contribute to understanding the implementation of a scientific area in Pará State, an area that would not only be restricted to the production of knowledge, but more than that, it would include the spreading, which provides various means, primarily through education. Thus it was possible to ensure that La Penha has an intellectual profile that can be considered a multi-and transdisciplinary intellectual who defends the possibility of forming a scientist one and multiple, non-linear attitudes and dialogues with all other areas in order to be understood under a model scientist for the twenty-first century based on the model clearly inspired by the scientist authors with which he identified throughout their training and professional activities, like the three that stood out in their relationship science: Archimedes, Leonhard Euler and Cliford Ambrose Truesdell

Self-propelled vehicles; a practical treatise on the theory, construction, operation, care and management of all forms of automobiles,

Includes index.

Motor vehicles and motors, their design, construction and working by steam, oil and electricity;

V.2 is 1st ed.

Vulnerable children, stigmatised smokers : The social construction of target audiences in media debates on policies regulating smoking in vehicles

Acknowledgements S.H., S.S. and S.D. developed the study concept and gained funding for the work. S.H. developed the study design. J.B. and H.W. drafted the manuscript. J.B. and H.W. developed the coding frame and coded the articles. S.H., S.S. and S.D. critically revised the manuscript. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project was funded by Cancer Research UK (C47682/A16930) and the Scottish School of Public Health Research. Sheila Duffy is Chief Executive of ASH Scotland. Heide Weishaar and Shona Hilton are funded by the UK Medical Research Council as part of the Informing Healthly Public Policy programme (MC_UU12017-15) at the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow. The authors declare no additional conflicting interest.

Intelligent computing and sensing for active safety on construction sites

On obstacle-cluttered construction sites where heavy equipment is in use, safety issues are of major concern. The main objective of this paper is to develop a framework with algorithms for obstacle avoidance and path planning based on real-time three-dimensional job site models to improve safety during equipment operation. These algorithms have the potential to prevent collisions between heavy equipment vehicles and other on-site objects. In this study, algorithms were developed for image data acquisition, real-time 3D spatial modeling, obstacle avoidance, and shortest path finding and were all integrated to construct a comprehensive collision-free path. Preliminary research results show that the proposed approach is feasible and has the potential to be used as an active safety feature for heavy equipment.

Block models for improved earthwork allocation planning in linear infrastructure construction

Earthwork planning has been considered in this article and a generic block partitioning and modelling approach has been devised to provide strategic plans of various levels of detail. Conceptually this approach is more accurate and comprehensive than others, for instance those that are section based. In response to environmental concerns the metric for decision making was fuel consumption and emissions. Haulage distance and gradient are also included as they are important components of these metrics. Advantageously the fuel consumption metric is generic and captures the physical difficulties of travelling over inclines of different gradients, that is consistent across all hauling vehicles. For validation, the proposed models and techniques have been applied to a real world road project. The numerical investigations have demonstrated that the models can be solved with relatively little CPU time. The proposed block models also result in solutions of superior quality, i.e. they have reduced fuel consumption and cost. Furthermore the plans differ considerably from those based solely upon a distance based metric thus demonstrating a need for industry to reflect upon their current practices.

Reducing the environmental impact of road construction

The practice of road construction and maintenance is inherently lean and efficient; a result of the economic benefits that are gained by minimizing wasted resources. In this age of conservation and environmental management, the inbuilt sustainability of existing road construction practices is being developed and extended to produce variety of environmentally sustainable options. A new concept of a “sustainable road” has emerged through both academia and industry, and is defined to be a road that is: - constructed to reduce environmental impacts; - designed to optimise the alignment (vertical and horizontal including considerations of ecological constraints and operational use by vehicles); - resilient to future environmental and economic pressures (e.g. climate change and resource scarcity); - adaptable to changing uses including increased travel volumes, greater demand for public and active (cycling and walking) transport, and; - able to harvest the energy to power itself.

The international match: Metaphors as vehicles of social identity building in cross-border mergers

This article focuses on cultural identity-building in the cross-border merger context. To provide an alternative to the dominant essentialist analyses of cultures and cultural differences, cultural identitybuilding is conceptualized as a metaphoric process. The focus is on two processes inherent in the cross-border merger context: construction of images of Us and Them and construction of images of a Common Future. Based on an analysis of a special metaphor exercise carried out in a recent Finnish–Swedish merger, the article illustrates how the metaphoric perspective reveals specific cognitive, emotional and political aspects of cultural identity-building that easily remain ‘hidden’ in the case of more traditional approaches.

Identification of Materials from Construction Site Images Using Content Based Image Retrieval Techniques

The capability to automatically identify shapes, objects and materials from the image content through direct and indirect methodologies has enabled the development of several civil engineering related applications that assist in the design, construction and maintenance of construction projects. Examples include surface cracks detection, assessment of fire-damaged mortar, fatigue evaluation of asphalt mixes, aggregate shape measurements, velocimentry, vehicles detection, pore size distribution in geotextiles, damage detection and others. This capability is a product of the technological breakthroughs in the area of Image and Video Processing that has allowed for the development of a large number of digital imaging applications in all industries ranging from the well established medical diagnostic tools (magnetic resonance imaging, spectroscopy and nuclear medical imaging) to image searching mechanisms (image matching, content based image retrieval). Content based image retrieval techniques can also assist in the automated recognition of materials in construction site images and thus enable the development of reliable methods for image classification and retrieval. The amount of original imaging information produced yearly in the construction industry during the last decade has experienced a tremendous growth. Digital cameras and image databases are gradually replacing traditional photography while owners demand complete site photograph logs and engineers store thousands of images for each project to use in a number of construction management tasks. However, construction companies tend to store images without following any standardized indexing protocols, thus making the manual searching and retrieval a tedious and time-consuming effort. Alternatively, material and object identification techniques can be used for the development of automated, content based, construction site image retrieval methodology. These methods can utilize automatic material or object based indexing to remove the user from the time-consuming and tedious manual classification process. In this paper, a novel material identification methodology is presented. This method utilizes content based image retrieval concepts to match known material samples with material clusters within the image content. The results demonstrate the suitability of this methodology for construction site image retrieval purposes and reveal the capability of existing image processing technologies to accurately identify a wealth of materials from construction site images.