OPSALC: An Operations Planning System for Autonomous Landfill Compaction

The construction workers and operators associated with the sanitary waste landfilling operation are at high health risks because of constant expose to harmful solids and gases. Automation of spreading and compacting processes during landfilling operation can result in improved safety due to reduction in exposure of workers to harmful environment. This paper describes a software system developed to assist: (1) design of landfill cells and (2) generation of area-covering path plan for spreading and compaction processes during a landfill operation. A given landfill site can be partitioned into 3-D cells using a probabilistic model for waste generation that takes into account population of the community served by the landfill. Partitioning of landfill is performed by employing a recursive spatial decomposition technique. During the decomposition process, a gradient in the range of 1:3 to 1:2 is maintained for each cell. A recursive sub-division of each cell into monominoes facilitates the system to automatically deal with any deviation in the actual volume of waste generation. The system is implemented using PHIGS graphics standard and MOTIF toolkit with C-program binding