A Simulator for Road Construction Equipment

The current practices on the road construction worksites have begun to change rapidly and fundamentally since the arrival on the market of new real-time positioning systems. These systems mean it is now possible to overcome the main weakness existing on construction sites today, e.g .. the huge gap between the design phases which are highly computerized and the work site itself where all numerical data is reduced to wooden grade stakes. New fields of research and development are now open for those who are in charge of accompanying this evolution: the localization techniques of course, but also the automatic control and guidance, the data transfer between all the different interactors and, from a general point of view, the real-time management of the work site. To support its activity in this field, the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussees, has developed a simulation software tool, based on the MATLAB-SIMULINK environment, which has already proved its efficiency through several research projects.