This came through on my alerts this morning. Technology is advancing and in our system of business, it is unstoppable. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-caterpillar-services-technology-focus-idUKKBN26X1ET
Ive seen this coming for awhile now. Still have to have us techs..............so far.
Until the machines self diagnose and call for a self driving truck to haul out to a Dealer Shop!! That will be fun to watch, first few should be as good as Musk's Starships landings!! I want to see the battery pack for a Excavator that size for ALL Electric!!
So kids of today that stay home and computer games can now get a job!!!
Im going to play the devils ******* here. Just think about it before you get too pissed at me. There comes a time when its cheaper because people as a "whole" have priced their self's out of a job , " Its not just the employees wage but all the taxes, insurance, workers comp, ext ext ext" . Its not just the employee at fault here its also the other A$$holes that have their hand into that paycheck. Also did you read the part about the person could be on the other side of the world . There goes some more jobs to china.
The way I see it....it’ll replace the people who weren’t all the great to start with. If you’re a good operator then I’d care to wager no machine can do the same work. It just eliminates all the a$$holes you work around and makes the porta-john last that much longer!!
If there wasn't ********, there would be no one to perform practical jokes on.
I don't buy into this crap that making a livable wage is somehow me being an Ahole. The billionaires have the uneducated believing that the problems are all caused by the poor and middle class. Maybe the real issue is the billionaires making their money only paying 10% on a capital gain and no wages while the poor and middle class pay 15% on up for every dollar they earn. Did you know Amazon paid no taxes in 2017 and 2018 and 1.2% for 2019. But their employees making $8 to $12 per hour are considered poison when they consider a union for any more money. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-taxes-1-2-percent-13-billion-2019/
I blame the Insurance companies, both health and liability, and the hospitals for that matter, some of the higher ups in small hospitals take rediculous bonuses.
Just my $.02 on the subject.. A week or so ago I was having a conversation with the lead field engineer on a $100M expansion and renovation project we are currently on about how it's really amazing we are able build these projects with the amount of stupid we have to deal with. This autonomous equipment can work flawlessly 24 - 7 in a perfect environment that's been laid out on a computer screen and meticulously programmed into their computer chips. Now enter the real world commercial or large multi-family site that changes daily - the bigger the project the more the changes. The reality is the job site is a constantly changing "organism" that the human workers must adapt too and make changes in order to get it completed on time and on budget - hence the conversation with the field engineer. Humans - even the dumb ones we have to deal with - can adapt, stand there looking stupid, go home or over come the issue and continue on building. How big will the jobsite trailer need to be to fit all the programmers needed for dealing with all the same variables of a modern day job site? Now I'm not foolish enough to dismiss this technology will never come to fruition as it ultimately will, however I am old enough to know that I will be comfortably sitting in a lounge chair on the Pacific side of some Central American country enjoying retirement by the time this technology puts me out of business. On second thought renting out fully wired double wide office trailers for the gaggle of programmers needed to run these new autonomous machines might be a profitable retirement business..
Yep, unrealistic on a real site, looks good on the demo field though like most stuff.
Should put them on old Power Station sites, all the buried RIP piping conduit and electrical cables for construction, buried debris of who knows why or what was buried, striking abandoned materials thought to have been hauled away or a miss positioned lay that a surveyor marked incorrectly for a site print on a bad day. Sets a different mindset as to what can happen.
I had a dream.....actually a few dreams, about a track hoe operator actually in the cab......but instead of working joysticks to control the machine.....he had on a head set, like a virtual reality set up in which he controlled the machine by thoughts. When is that cake job coming?
Maybe that would happen until a bee/wasp gets in the cab!!!
well, its coming whether we like it or not. look at how robotics changed manufacturing and production. its also coming to agriculture--gps, auto-guidance and auto-steering have been around for many years and now all the big players are developing fully autonomous machines. not to sound overly dismal, but as humans, we have created our own demise
I think this comment from the article is somewhat enlightening............ "But it’s early days, and s uch tech remains a niche part of Caterpillar’s operations . Though it does not break out the revenue from technology sales, the rising demand is unlikely to make a major impact anytime soon on the group’s revenue, which stood at about $54 billion last year."
The more crap they put on machines the more crap to go wrong. Just look at the the pollution control ,you can hardly keep the new ones running compared to old ones
I find it funny that a pandemic is fueling this trend. Really now, last time I checked equipment operators sit alone in a climate-controlled cab. That's the ultimate social distancing right there. I can't quite wrap my head around the remote controlled equipment. Does anybody else think it'd be difficult to judge distance or have trouble gauging the surroundings through a TV screen? Not only that but just not having the feedback through the joysticks and controls. Or even just feeling the machine responding to the work. A good operator utilizes all their senses to work safely and productively. I'm just not seeing that happen with remote controlled units.
Years ago (mid 70s )while working on a site a drainage contractor rocked up and started laying pipes. It was the first time I had seen a laser being used so I had to have a chat with him. One of the questions I asked was " how much did the laser cost "? 6 grand was the reply to which I let out a whistle. Yeah he continued " one mans yearly wage that I don't have to employ. Next year is cream". Now today with technology replacing people were do the people go to earn a living? on the dole que or a life of crime, who the hell knows but one thing is for sure those things cost the community and the TAX PAYER. During the 1929/30s depression President Hoover pumped millions of dollars into the top end of town of which 50% got to the people who needed it most. Then along come a very enlightened First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who told her husband to turn it around and shove the money into the bottom end. The simplicity of it is that for every dollar spent creates 3 dollars in the community. And that folks sent America on it's greatest nation building program ever and has been forgotten or ignored by people and politicians of all sides since. Heck Caterpillar wouldn't exist today but for that First Lady.
Unfortunately we're putting ourselves out of work. Simply too many people on the planet for the level of efficiency that technology has afforded us.
That I understand, its been going on for years, chainsaws replaced axemen, earthmoving equipment replacing the pick and shovel etc. But I think technology replacing operators is a step to far for the whole community and the social cost to high which won't be paid by those using it. Sure I've seen mining towns here in Australia with wages so high that people servicing those towns can't afford to live there and can't afford to travel because they don't get paid enough. Will technology smash those towns along with schools, hospitals ,doctors surgeries, local shopping centres and all the other business the make them flourish?
Mind control was discussed at length at the tavern one night after work. It was decided that the death toll would be too high because there is always that one prick inspector that you would like to... well you know.
I don't think we really want to be tapped directly into the mind of your average operator.
Yeah controlling machine with my mind would be a terrible idea: "Stick out, boom down, curl bucket, stick in. I wonder what would happen if I smashed that half-ton into the hole????? OH F###!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
My thoughts on the remote control as well. I get a chuckle out of the pictures and videos of the guy standing on a dirt pile in an open field running an enclosed cab skid steer - why the hell would I want to stand out in the elements running a remote control? I'd rather have my lazy butt in an air ride seat with A/C and a radio being able to see and feel what I'm doing. Now a remote control machine has it's place in hazardous environments but just get in the damn machine on a normal jobsite and run it.
Not going to happen? What about self driving cars. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephe...f-driving-cars-go-mainstream/?sh=5391979c4e24 Already running in Phoenix, AZ.
Yeah if I'm doing site work at Chernobyl sign me up for the drone skid steer.
Killed a lady about 2 years ago to when ran her over As for self operating equipment that wont fly on any job for lack of organization and what's the standby time on smart machine when the job is sideways and not moving not to mention 24 7 is unlikely an the metro area because there are people living close by usually Remote operation is un realistic as well because of people's in ability to not put there rebar or form work or pipe fittings or string lines in the way and then it's a 2 hour job to get it moved cm said it earlier the amount of stupid prevents it Engineers cant design things to be built in the first place with a year of pre planning and still have major revisions now add in programmers that dont see the job either and it will be the biggest cluster Yes cats been at the autonomous mining equipment since the 80s that's why they built tanaja hills for by Tucson to test there first driverless truck but mines are a highly controlled environment witch creates utopian work area for driverless equipment
Mines have mine money too so they have that going for them. They can afford to mess with the automated toys.
I can think of a load of operating environments in my world of mining where not having an operator in the cab could prove extremely advantageous. A dozer pushing material over a dump edge would be one such example. The dozer system is known as CMD (command for dozing) and in most of the promotional videos I’ve seen the operator was sitting in an air-conditioned container in what was effectively a simulator cab setup.
Remote-control LHDs have been used in underground mines for decades, in unsupported open stopes and some drawpoint work. Line-of-sight remote control is still dominant but teleremote operation like that dozer system is becoming popular. Apparently some operators have run themselves over with line-of-sight RRC, which has driven the demand for teleremote. Remote operation of any kind is generally accepted to be less efficient than having the operator in the machine. Worse fill factors, tire wear, tram speed, and harder on the machine in general.
Autonomous isn't remote operation though. My brother was an electrician on A6 bombers in the navy. He told me that the planes in Vietnam could do everything autonomously except take off and land on a carrier or avoid missiles. He told me the story of a green pilot that was being a jerk so they set up the autopilot in the plane to turn the plane upside down every time the pilot engaged it. Now my brother does carry the genes for embellishing a story, but it does seem a little bit plausible. I would guess that remote controls work on radio frequencies. Is there an possibility or history of them being hacked.
Komatsu had information on autonomous construction machinery. I think they used drones and gps. I think they still had a man on site. MFE produced materials for Jamer. They had an automated crusher spread for the night shift. The day shift would produce more than enough material through the primary crusher to feed the secondary plant all day, and the stock pile would keep the night equipment going. I think it was piled over a massive hopper that would feed all night. sensors would measure the height of the material on the mouth of the cone, and slow or speed up the feed. Between the occupational health and safety people, and a few night spills, it didn't last more than a summer. In the event of a problem, the system would shut down, and call an emergency number. Not sure how that phone call would go. Probably no small talk. This was over ten years ago. The tech might be better. Still need the human in the mix. For now anyway.
That's an interesting possibility that is worth some research. Besides for mining and equipment, my other occupational interest is two-way radio. My initial thought is that the RRC system will transmit a key or other verification word with each control transmission, with it likely being encrypted to prevent parsing it. That measure would prevent hijacking the RRC equipment but would obviously not make it immune to a noise-jamming attack. No reason it couldn't use FHSS on one of the ISM bands for jamming resistance, though.
Every industry goes through automation enhancement. I started my career building computer chips in factories where every batch of silicon wafers (chips) was carried from tool to tool, loaded into the tool, and visually inspected by a human. When robotic loaders, automated conveyor systems, inline inspections systems, etc. came into play, everyone was up in arms that workers would be pushed out. Instead, the opposite happened: with more efficiency the factories became more economical and thus got a LOT larger. We had to hire more workers to install, monitor, fix, etc. all the automated machines. So yes, the number of people required to build one computer chip dropped very low but since the number of computer chips we built skyrocketed, we actually ended up employing more people. A couple other thoughts: 1) The airlines, military, and commercial transportation have been talking about the "dream" of complete automation for decades where you remove all the humans. While it's very desirable to use robots in a lot of industries, it's also very hard to completely implement them in complete manner. IMHO, humans will always have their places in this areas for the foreseeable future. I think construction will also be in this area due all the unique challenges to simply automate. 2) Automation can also be thought of simple increasing productivity or efficiency. Just like the first steam shovels replaced teams of oxen and men with pickaxes and shovel (I'm sure there was an uproar about those jobs disappearing too), industries that continue to increase their operational efficiencies (ie-get cheaper for their services) can actually grow and eventually employ more folks. The airlines are a good example. Airplanes became safer, cheaper, and more reliable to operate due to automation of the system (the plane) which eventually made what used to be a mode of travel reserved only for the rich now available to everyone. While today's airplanes are capable of full autonomous operation, the airlines employ lots of people include lots of pilots to still operate as an industry.
One of the big issues that was brought up when Bomarc Missiles were supposed to be the latest greatest deterrent against a Soviet (or other) threat to N. America was that they don't allow for a human element to access the threat. The Bomarc was obsolete before it even went into service. Imagine how many planes could have been shot down because they went a little off course. Interceptors have proven to be the best option for decades since the Bomarc's were hailed as the wave of the future. That said I think planes like the F-35 are just a big waste of money. More of an experiment to see what is possible in my opinion and the billions and billions spent could be put to better use.
Ill bet the passengers on that flight that went down in the potomec were glad there was a real pilot in the seat and not that blow up pilot in that movie that I cant think of
Sully is a hero for good reason.
That movie was Airplane and you're spot on as to why we we still have human in the front seat of those giant pressurized cigar tubes. Even if if that human pilot is 'tethered' via sat-com radio and sitting in an air conditioned room a few thousand miles away (think of the military drones in Iraq/Afghanistan), you'll still have a human 'driving it' for a long time. Otto was the name of that autopilot. And I really doubt you'll see Otto's anytime soon pushing dirt on a dozer. And yes, Airplane is a classic movie!
Lets face it, when it's feasible and cost effective companies will be all over it. Like I tell my minions, if I could replace you guys with a couple robots, a remote controlled excavator and a Roomba you losers would be out on the street already. lol