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As the old adage goes, a rolling stone gath- ers no moss. That is especially true in the area of collision avoidance, where the everyday improvements in technology such as global positioning, radar, digital imagery, and even performance monitor- ing quickly make their way into the mining sector to enhance safety and accuracy, and even production uptime. Much of the advancement the under- ground side of the industry has seen has correlated fairly directly to increasing reg- ulation, but much of what is changing — rapidly — at the surface in terms of colli- sion avoidance systems (CAS) design and what makes the best even better has arguably been spurred more organically and in a relatively more proactive manner in comparison. The constant transformations, new research, partnerships and other pursuits going into collision avoidance is, quite exciting to watch evolve. Always aspiring to remain at the crest of innovation, some of coal's main providers of the technology are eager to share where they are headed. Fatigue's Role in Collision Avoidance In the open-pit mining environment, according to SAFEmine, approximately 65% of truck haulage accidents are directly related to driver fatigue or exhaustion. In response to this alarming number, the company last fall announced its FatigueMonitor, which integrates data from fatigue detection and collision avoid- ance units to minimize accidents involving mining vehicles. The operator-friendly FatigueMonitor helps operators maintain levels of attention c o l l i s i o n avo i da n c e B Y D O N N A S C H M I D T , F I E L D E D I T O R Technologies Collide for Surface Safety Suppliers, OEMs alike work to advance collision avoidance technology 40 www.coalage.com February 2015 Being a supplier of collision avoidance technology is one thing, but being an OEM — especially a substantial outfit like Caterpillar — that also maintains its own system technology brings with it a completely different perspective. For Cat, it is all about responding to its customers' needs now and anticipating their require- ments into the future. "I think site managers and equipment owners are look- ing to do anything they can just to make the site safer and prevent vehicle accidents and worse, injuries," Caterpillar Marketing Consultant Gary Cook said. "With the advances of the automotive industry and what it is doing now with safe following distance tracking, lane departure notifica- tions, etc., we are getting a lot of interest over the last few years in having our machines be able to do that. That's how customers are driving this technology." The Cat MineStar System includes the Detect capabil- ity set, which offers different levels of object detection and collision avoidance technology. As Cook explained, the solution can start with cameras, adding in radar and GPS capabilities for proximity awareness while keeping the technology scalable. "A scalable approach allows us to give a customer the level of collision avoid- ance detection they need. If they just want vision with cameras to display on an in-cab monitor, we can do that. Then we add radar to detect objects and provide the next level of avoidance with visual and audible warnings." Proximity Awareness, a GNSS-based product system that allows the machine to see the location of the other vehicles on the in-cab display, is also available. If a machine's path of travel intersects with another machine's path, the operator is notified with a quick audible alert and visual information. It is particularly beneficial for large mining trucks with longer stopping distances, as it permits operators to get a solid look at their surroundings before moving in any direction. Speed zones and limits can be set for specific areas on the job site using the system, which works on a wireless network infrastructure. Cat introduced object detection in 2010, and in the years since, it has evolved appreciably thanks to cus- tomer feedback. "We've made some hardware improvements, such as reducing the number of radars while retaining the same amount of coverage, but mainly we've improved function- alities such as eliminating a physical acknowledgement of a detected object," Cook said. For example, he noted, the original system required the operator to interact with the screen by pressing to see what was detected. The feedback the company received on that feature was negative, so it was removed. "Another feature change was to enlarge the camera view to occupy 90% of the screen. We've also added prox- imity bars to let the operator know the approximate dis- tance of the detected object. The original detection prod- uct only indicated a general zone location — front, left or right, side or back," he said. More recently, Cat has added software upgrades to provide No Alarm Zones, which it said are designated areas on a map that will not alarm when an object is detected; for example, when a truck is backing into a cov- ered hopper, radar is going to pick it up as an object and alarm, but with Caterpillar's zoning capability, that can be avoided. Safety is paramount when it comes to collision avoid- ance systems, but as Cook noted, there are additional benefits from these integrated monitoring systems. "With the proximity awareness system, we have the ability to capture incidents," he said. "Anytime body-to- body avoidance occurs, the incident is available for playback and reporting. Mine managers will be able to use that information to track performance improve- ments over time." The OEM Perspective: Caterpillar Radars, part of Caterpillar's Detect system, are mounted on equipment such as this Cat 993K. The Cat Detect display inside a truck cab shows the operator his surroundings.