Vinci’s UK civil engineering subsidiary Taylor Woodrow has been running the rule over the UK’s first autonomous excavator, with a full site-based trial.
At the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) in Sheffield a demonstration site was set up so that the Taylor Woodrow innovation team and Swiss specialist Gravis Robotics could put the intelligent machine through its paces.
The Yanmar SV100-7 excavator, adapted by Gravis Robotics, passed a series of exercises including autonomous excavation to various depths in differing ground conditions, real-time LiDAR capture of the excavation, emergency safe stop as well as autonomous manoeuvring.
The project was overseen and verified by experienced site managers, engineers and machine operators treating it as a real project. All the excavation tasks were taken from a real, upcoming scheme to evaluate how it would perform if deployed there. And it worked.
According to Taylor Woodrow, the trial was about more than just an excavator without an operator in the cab. It was about supporting the development of physical artificial intelligence (AI) and the technologies that will allow Taylor Woodrow to transform how physical work is done.
The next step is for the Yanmar machine to go live at Taylor Woodrow’s project at Manchester Airport.
Taylor Woodrow managing director Phil Skegg said: “Over the last 10 years our industry safety record has not improved, and our productivity has declined. As an industry around 20% of the cost of what we build can be attributed to not getting it right first time. We believe that increasing the mechanisation and automation of the tasks we undertake on site will help address these problems, removing people from danger, being more productive and improving quality of workmanship.
“Computer controlled machines could be the way forward and as an industry leader we want to be an early adopter and trial what is available. This is an exciting first step, made possible by our partnership with Gravis Robotics supported by Yanmar Construction Equipment and AMRC.”