Browse Topic: Soils
Tippers transporting loose bulk cargo during prolonged descents are subject to two critical operational challenges: cargo displacement and rear axle lifting. Uncontrolled cargo movement, often involving loose aggregates or soil, arises due to gravitational forces and insufficient restraint systems. This phenomenon can lead to cabin damage, loss of control, and hazardous discharge of materials onto roadways. Simultaneously, load imbalances during descent can cause rear axle lift, increasing stress on the front steering axle, resulting in tire slippage and compromised maneuverability. This study proposes a dynamic control strategy that adjusts the tipper lift angle in real time to align with the descent angle of the road. By synchronizing the trailer bed angle with the slope of the terrain, the system minimizes cargo instability, maintains rear axle contact, and enhances braking performance, including engine and exhaust braking systems. Computational modelling is employed to assess the
The success of off-road missions for ground vehicles depends heavily on terrain traversability, which in turn requires a thorough understanding of soil characteristics a key component being soil moisture content. When large areas need to be analyzed, satellite imagery is often used, although this approach typically reduces the spatial resolution. This decrease of spatial resolution creates what are known as mixed pixels, when two or more classes or features are in a single pixel’s area, which can lead to noisier data and lower accuracy models. This paper investigates using linear spectral unmixing as a way to help clean / mitigate noisy data to yield better predictive models. Hyperspectral remote sensing from the Hyperion satellite platform and ground truth from the International Soil Moisture Network (ISMN) are used for the dataset. This study found that soil moisture content prediction, comparing the mixed multilayer perceptron (MLP) model with an unmixing approach revealed a 10–30
The automation of labor-intensive picking and planting operations is having an immediate impact in the agricultural indutry. In its simplest form, robotic automation can reduce the labor and soil disturbance while enabling organic soil cover and increasing species diversification through precision approaches to planting, weeding, and spraying. With this, pesticides and fertilizers can be applied in a more targeted way, and with machinery visiting fields more frequently, earlier and more targeted intervention can occur before pests become established. Small, Mobile, and Autonomous Agricultural Robots identifies issues that need to be resolved fo for this technology to thrive, including improving methods of acquiring and labeling training data to facilitate more accurate models for specific applications. It also discusses concepts such as general-purpose mechanical platforms for use as carriers of agricultural automation systems with high stability, positional accuracy, and variable
San Francisco startup Canvas has developed a robotic system handling one of the most labor-intensive trades in construction: drywall finishing. Leveraging robotic arms from Universal Robots, Canvas has built a machine that reduces the usual five to seven days of spraying and sanding the drywall to just around two days for both Level 4 and Level 5 finishes.
A Northwestern University-led team of researchers has developed a new fuel cell that harvests energy from microbes living in dirt. About the size of a standard paperback book, the completely soil-powered technology could fuel underground sensors used in precision agriculture and green infrastructure. This potentially could offer a sustainable, renewable alternative to batteries, which hold toxic, flammable chemicals that leach into the ground, are fraught with conflict-filled supply chains and contribute to the ever-growing problem of electronic waste.
With the recent rise in electric vehicles and mobile devices, managing spent batteries has become a critical global challenge. By 2040, the number of decommissioned electric vehicles is expected to exceed 40 million, leading to a sharp increase in waste batteries. Developing advanced recycling technologies has thus become an urgent priority, as the metals in batteries pose a significant risk of soil and water contamination.
NASA has selected a team of University of Florida aerospace engineers to pursue a groundbreaking $12 million mission aimed at improving the way we track changes in Earth’s structures, such as tectonic plates and oceans.
A Dartmouth-led research team set out to determine if managing green roof soil microbes could boost healthy urban soil development, a methodology that could be applied to support climate resilience in cities.
Spaceflight outside of the Earth’s protective magnetic field is dangerous from a cosmic radiation perspective. Inside Earth’s magnetic field, where the manned International Space Station (ISS) orbits, the radiation encountered is minimal and almost all is deflected by our planet’s magnetic fields. However, outside that protective shield, the Sun’s solar wind (high energy radiation, solar energetic particles or SEPs) consisting of protons, electrons, alpha particles, and plasmas continuously bombards the spacecraft for the months or years of spaceflight.
Researchers have taken the first steps toward finding liquid solvents that may someday help extract critical building materials from lunar and Martian rock dust, an important piece in making long-term space travel possible.
Imagine the Moon as a hub of manufacturing, construction, and even human life. It’s no longer a far-fetched idea baked in science fiction lore — increased interest and investment in space exploration are pushing efforts to develop the technologies needed to make the moon a viable home for humans.
Komatsu introduced its first battery-electric load-haul-dump (LHD) machine, the WX04B, at the MINExpo tradeshow in September. The WX04B is designed specifically for narrow vein mines in underground hard rock mining operations. Komatsu is pairing the electric LHD with its new OEM-agnostic 150-kW battery charger that was also revealed in Las Vegas. The 4-tonne WX04B LHD features what Komatsu claims is best-in-class energy density, offering up to four hours of runtime on a single charge. The Li-ion NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) battery from Proterra has a capacity of 165 kWh and nominal voltage of 660 V. Fewer charge cycles are needed compared to competitors, the company claims, which helps to maximize operational efficiency and minimize downtime. Proterra and Komatsu began their collaboration on the LHD's H Series battery system in 2021, long before Komatsu's acquisition of American Battery Solutions (ABS) in December 2023.
Designing non-destructive test (NDT) systems for aerospace clients can feel like engineering with blindfolds on. Even when the parts under test aren’t confidential, they can change rapidly as companies optimize their designs. This accelerated innovation helps launch more powerful, safer vehicles for use inside Earth’s orbit and beyond. But how do you create precision inspection systems without knowing what they’ll inspect in the field?
A new robotic suction cup which can grasp rough, curved, and heavy stone, has been developed by scientists at the University of Bristol. The team, based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, studied the structures of octopus biological suckers, which have superb adaptive suction abilities enabling them to anchor to rock.
The manufacturing landscape is undergoing a transformation, propelled by the need for innovative, efficient, and precise technology that can effectively replace expensive manual labor. This article examines advancements in Flexiv’s material abrasion technology, specifically focusing on sanding and polishing applications and the utility of force control technology.
A new computer model tool, developed by researchers at the University of Bristol and based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, could be used to train astronauts ahead of Lunar missions.
Lunar landing and launch pads represent critical infrastructure for enabling a sustained presence on the Moon or other planetary bodies. Such a Moon presence would require repeated lunar landings and takeoffs, preferably near an outpost or habitat. In the absence of takeoff and landing pads, such vehicles could project lunar regolith at high velocities, sandblasting the surrounding infrastructure and causing damage.
Storing energy is one of the key challenges for implementing sustainable but intermittent electricity sources like solar and wind. Engineers at Sandia National Laboratories are collaborating with New Mexico-based CSolPower LLC to develop a very affordable method of accomplishing that storage.
In Penn’s Clean Energy Conversions Lab, researcher Peter Psarras and colleagues are repurposing waste from industrial mines, storing carbon pulled from the atmosphere into newly formed rock. The team sees great environmental potential in mine tailings, the sand and sludge left behind after the sought-after ore gets removed. With samples in the lab, they’re trying to determine just how much calcium and magnesium each contains, how to best carbonate it with CO2, how and where they can store the result, and whether the process is scalable.
When asked about the most dreaded tasks on the manufacturing floor, many teams point to sanding, grinding, or polishing. These unforgiving tasks can be tedious, time-consuming, and hazardous, leading to respiratory illnesses and repetitive motion injuries. In today’s economic climate, finding workers willing to perform these taxing jobs can be challenging. Yet, they are often necessary when assembling metal, composite, or other parts into manufactured products.
Litter is not only a problem on Earth. According to NASA, there are currently millions of pieces of space junk in the range of altitudes from 200 to 2000 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, which is known as low-Earth orbit (LEO). Most of the junk is comprised of objects created by humans, like pieces of old spacecraft or defunct satellites. This space debris can reach speeds of up to 18,000 miles per hour, posing a major danger to the 2612 satellites that currently operate at LEO. Without effective tools for tracking space debris, parts of LEO may even become too hazardous for satellites.
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images are a powerful tool for studying the Earth’s surface. They are radar signals generated by an imaging system mounted on a platform such as an aircraft or satellite. As the platform moves, the system emits sequentially high-power electromagnetic waves through its antenna. The waves are then reflected by the Earth’s surface, re-captured by the antenna, and finally processed to create detailed images of the terrain below.
A team at Delft University of Technology has built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision — e.g., underwater or for medical imaging. The work is now published in Nature Communications. Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health.
Exploring and developing permanent infrastructure on Mars requires the development of technologies to enable safe and efficient operations, from landing, roving, and extravehicular activities (EVAs) to prospecting, evaluating, acquiring, extracting, and utilizing local resources. Martian regolith is likely to be the main resource used for initial Martian in situ resource utilization (ISRU) to lessen the amount of resources and supplies that must be launched at high cost from Earth and take up precious cargo space.
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