A study on an Autonomous Crawler Carrier System with AI based Transportation Control

This paper proposes an autonomous crawler carrier system to improve productivity of earth and sand transportation work. In general, multiple crawler carriers on the transportation work repeatedly move on almost the same route between loading and unloading locations. There is a risk that the crawler carrier deviates from the transport path due to the driver's fatigue and reduced concentration since the transportation work is a monotonous and repetitive operation. The proposed system enables multiple crawler carriers to automatically move on the same route without collision using an artificial intelligence (AI) based control. There are four steps in the AI control flow. First, the driver performs the teaching operation while checking the route from the camera image. Then, teaching route data for an autonomous crawler carrier is created. Second, the AI on the personal computer selects several routes that can maintain safe crawler carrier positions for all routes of multiple carriers. Third, AI generates an efficient operation plan that minimizes the working cost and time from all positional relationships. Finally, when the operator presses the start switch on the control panel, AI controlled multiple crawler carriers move efficiently without collision. This smart control was introduced for the construction of earth and sand transportation in the Aso-Ohashi area, and efficient operation was confirmed.