GPS World

Tag: heavy equipment

  • Topcon offers MC-X Platform and MC-Max machine control solution

    Topcon offers MC-X Platform and MC-Max machine control solution

    Photo: Topcon
    Photo: Topcon

    Topcon Positioning Group has announced its MC-Max machine control solution. Based on its MC-X machine control platform, and backed by Sitelink3D — the company’s real-time, cloud-based data management ecosystem — MC-Max is a scalable solution for mixed-fleet heavy equipment environments. It is designed to adapt to owners’ machine control and data integration needs as their fleets and workflows expand.

    MC-Max increases processing power, speed, accuracy, versatility and reliability; and can be installed on a full range of dozers and excavators, using the same basic modular components. Modern, redesigned user and product interfaces were developed based on real-world applications and customer feedback and provide a simplified and immersive user experience that allows operators to learn the system easily.

    “With MC-Max, we’ve created a solution that is flexible and can continue to grow as a contractor’s needs and capabilities expand,” said Jamie Williamson, executive vice president, Topcon Positioning Group. “This new solution provides improved scalability and precision in the field and offers business owners real-time data integration, connectivity and resource management capabilities across their entire workflow.”

    The MC-Max solution offers flexible mounting solutions, as well as optional automatic blade and bucket control for a variety of machines. The system also provides a full battery of positioning technologies ranging from slope control to laser, multi-constellation GNSS, robotic total station and millimeter GPS systems.

    MC-Max provides project managers a real-time view of machine positions, activities and onsite progress, and is compatible with a wide range of site communications systems.

    Topcon MC-X Platform

    The Topcon MC-X Platform is designed to make machine control easy to use and affordable for all contractors. The platform ties together mixed fleets by interacting with multiple versions of 3D-MC, providing connectivity to Sitelink3D and taking advantage of the multi-constellation capabilities of GNSS antennas. 

  • Trimble GuidEx enables control of machine navigation

    Trimble GuidEx enables control of machine navigation

    The Trimble GuidEx machine guidance system is an advanced navigation solution to guide machines along route corridors or to specific target areas.

    Photo: Trimble
    Photo: Trimble

    Trimble has introduced the Trimble GuidEx Machine Guidance System, an advanced machine navigation solution intended to quickly and efficiently guide machines along route corridors or to specific target areas, while providing local awareness using customer-provided mapping or engineering data to create exclusion and inclusion zones.

    Trimble GuidEx uses an integrated GNSS and inertial navigation system (INS) to compute a virtual reference point and precise heading, pitch and roll.

    Users can install the Trimble GuidEx system on anything from utility terrain vehicles (UTVs) to heavy equipment, on- or off-road.

    Trimble GuidEx provides streamlined design-stakeout navigation that eliminates the need for advance survey stakeout operations. This enables machine operators to navigate to an exact point without stakes or surveyors, such as for core-sampling operations.

    Corridor navigation allows users to efficiently complete a range of tasks including clearing paths for access routes and plowing snow. With comprehensive local machine data-logging, contractors can capture a range of data including position, time and speed.

    “Trimble GuidEx was built to meet the needs of natural resource exploration activities, but can be used for many other applications,” said Scott Crozier, vice president of Trimble Civil Construction. “This system improves productivity and awareness with easy, efficient, task-specific navigation.”

    To ensure work is done exactly where it should be, proximity and zone breach alarms can be set based on custom exclusion and inclusion zones.

    Regardless of the equipment or the application, Trimble GuidEx uses customer-provided data to keep operators aware of prohibited or dangerous areas and decrease time and money wasted on unnecessary work.

    Trimble GuidEx provides crossline navigation along predefined routes via an integrated software-based lightbar viewed on the display, including visual and audible alarms when operators breach user-defined distances from a centerline. The system also provides point and pad navigation information with intuitive navigational arrows, supported by a wide variety of data recording settings.

    Compatible with virtually any machine type, Trimble GuidEx connects equipment to the office to keep everyone aligned. Operators and supervisors can send mapping data to and from the machine and office to avoid rework.

    Reliable guidance data allows contractors to track machines by time or user-defined event triggers for a more accurate representation of the machine utilization cost of a project. Trimble GuidEx can leverage real-time kinematic (RTK) and CenterPoint RTX correction services for enhanced high-accuracy positioning.

  • Hemisphere GNSS enables OEM-branded machine control systems

    Hemisphere GNSS has made significant achievements with its GradeMetrix OEM toolkit for high-precision GNSS-based machine control and guidance applications and systems.

    Hemisphere has expanded its portfolio of hardware offerings, including the A222 Scalable GNSS Smart Antenna introduced in November 2017, and made significant strides forward with its next-generation GradeMetrix OEM application software platform.

    Whether it is grading, mining, excavating, drilling and piling, or compaction applications, heavy equipment manufacturers can rebrand the solution and drive feature requirements to sell as their own.

    Hemisphere made the announcement at Intermat Paris 2018, where the company is exhibiting at stand 6 J 027.

    The GradeMetrix toolkit allows OEMs to select components, a-la-carte or as complete solutions, based on their accuracy and durability requirements and integrate into their machines to design their own IP. This allows manufacturers to maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace, as they do not have to compete with conventional or traditional machine control and guidance dealers selling aftermarket systems, the company said.

    Hemisphere owns the design of the toolkit and its components and ensures each component is reliable with guaranteed compliance through design. The fully customizable and flexible toolkit provides the ability to tailor displays and outputs, per OEM requirements, and also offers OPA (open architecture) for implementing inputs and third-party sensors already available on machines.

    Through UniStrong, Hemisphere’s parent company, the GradeMetrix toolkit also has seamless access to complimentary and innovative technologies. This allows for much faster times to market, driving increased revenue streams for OEMs, and provides a high cost/value ratio.

    “The feedback we are receiving from OEMs already using our GradeMetrix toolkit is outstanding,” said Randy Noland, vice president of Global Sales & Business Development with Hemisphere GNSS. “For the first time in our industry, we are offering OEMs the opportunity to build their own machine control and guidance systems using their specifications and offering it to their customers, with their brand, 100% of the time.”

    Manufacturers are looking for flexibility and price performance in existing system offerings or in new systems. Hemisphere continues to provide anfull system OEM positioning solution toolkit for building powerful, complete or a-la-carte machine control and guidance systems including GradeMetrix OEM application software and an array of compatible GNSS hardware components.

    These include IronOne Rugged Display & Computer, A222 Scalable GNSS Smart Antenna, A326 Rugged GNSS Smart Antenna, Vector VR500 Rugged All-In-One Smart Antenna, Vector VR1000 Rugged GNSS Receiver, and C321+ RTK Base & Rover with SiteMetrix Site Management Software.

  • Kairos Unveils UGV Tech for Heavy Equipment at AUVSI 2015

    Kairos Unveils UGV Tech for Heavy Equipment at AUVSI 2015

    Kairos Autonomi produces solutions that can be retrofitted or "strapped-on" to any existing optionally unmanned vehicle or vessel.
    Kairos Autonomi produces solutions that can be retrofitted or “strapped-on” to any existing optionally unmanned vehicle or vessel.

    Kairos Autonomi is displaying its latest autonomous technology designed for use with heavy equipment and machinery. Kairos’ robotic applique kits are add-on vehicle autonomy systems that provide unmanned capabilities to current manned vehicles, rendering them optionally unmanned.

    Equipped with larger gear faces, stronger actuators than its predecessors and a pathing upgrade, the Pronto4 Heavy delivers the increased torque needed to control the traction, braking, throttle and implements in heavy vehicles and equipment, as well as smarter robotic functions such as GPS path following and supervised autonomous behaviors.

    The Pronto4 Heavy Planar Robotic Applique Kit For Heavy Equipment.(PRNewsFoto/Kairos Autonomi)
    The Pronto4 Heavy Planar Robotic Applique Kit For Heavy Equipment. (PRNewsFoto/Kairos Autonomi)

    The robotic applique kit is platform independent, meaning it can be installed in any heavy vehicle or machine, rendering that vehicle optionally unmanned, which means the equipment can still operate manually as needed.

    Kairos Autonomi is exhibiting at the AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2015 show being held May 4-7 in Atlanta, Ga. (booth #1437).

    The Pronto4 Robotic Applique Kit manufactured by Kairos is used throughout the world to convert existing man-operable ground vehicles and surface vessels into unmanned systems. Applications include government or academic research and development; military training and test and evaluation; range clearance; mining; and tactical military applications.

  • SeeControl Adds Quake Products to Ag and Heavy Equipment Solutions

    SeeControl, a machine-to-machine (M2M) cloud service provider, announced today that it will add Quake Global’s Q4000 to its line of turnkey M2M solutions for agriculture and equipment telemetry.

    The Q4000 is a dual-mode communication modem that will connect either to a satellite network or to a traditional ground-based wireless data network. The modem will automatically choose the most economical method of sending the data. The combined communication capabilities of the Q4000 and SeeControl’s turnkey telematics applications will allow equipment OEMs and owners to send and receive information from globally dispersed heavy equipment, harvesters, irrigation systems, fluid tanks, generators and vehicles.

    “Our device store offers a vast selection of turnkey M2M sensor devices to enable mixed asset and fleet operations,” Said Bryan Kester, CEO of SeeControl. “Now, with Quake, this extends to effortless satellite and GSM connectivity in a single easy-to-deploy product. It is perfect for equipment owners that want to add new asset types to an existing global fleet, or for OEM equipment manufacturers designing the next generation of telematics programs.”

    “We are very pleased to establish this relationship with SeeControl,” said Polina Braunstein, CEO of Quake. “They are a recognized leader in the agricultural OEM and Telematics solutions arena. We anticipate that considerable agriculture and equipment telematics innovation will be fueled by the global reach of the Q4000, combined with SeeControl’s software-as-a-service cloud for sensor reporting and analytics.”

    The combined offering is on display at Booth P48 at the 2013 World Agricultural Expo, taking place now through Thursday in Tulare, California.