Autonomy Takes Off-highway

Integrating automation systems in mining, agricultural and construction machines can increase safety and productivity in the field and bring significant economic benefits.

Autonomous operation for on-highway commercial vehicles has grabbed headlines and public attention, rightfully so since these haulers increasingly will share the roads with passenger vehicles. But there is a lot of interesting new core work occurring in the off-highway autonomy space as well, according to Brendan Chan, chief engineer of unmanned systems and active safety at Oshkosh Corp.

“There's the hub-to-hub stuff that everyone's been talking about. There's also a lot of geofence, low-speed applications where autonomy could be very useful and a very good value,” Chan said at the 2020 SAE COMVEC Digital Summit. Vehicles for yard maneuvering is one such application.