Active Seat Isolation for Construction and Mining Vehicles

This paper describes seats incorporating an active vibration and shock cancellation system for vehicles used by the construction and mining industries. Integral to the system are components and techniques that Aura Systems has developed in the course of stepping up to state-of-the-art vibration isolation, cancellation, and generation challenges in related areas. Aura has developed this through the use of magnetic actuators attached to the individual seat to dampen and eliminate disturbances by up to 80 db at all appropriate frequency levels associated with that seat. Further, the overall power efficiency, light weight and extremely high reliability/low maintenance characteristics of the system in comparison to alternative active suspension approaches -- coupled with its performance across all load and disturbance environments -- is unmatched. In addition to meeting performance goals, Aura's approach is cost effective, putting it well within the reach of potential users in the construction and mining industries. The need for such a seat suspension is paramount to the long term health, safety and performance of the vehicle drivers. The reduction of long term health payments for disability alone would appear to outweigh any up front costs for such a seat. This paper reviews the vibration and shock cancellation problem for active seating in these industries, sets forth Aura's approach, and concludes with an indication of the performance that is anticipated.