Command and control – what does that make you think of? A slave labour workforce, your own robot army (yes please), kids that do what you want when you want?

All highly plausible (except for the last, that will never ever happen, well not for me anyway!)  And each having its own merits, but this is Machine Control so we have a higher purpose. What exactly are we talking about? Well think of a good old WWII movie and fast-forward to the major action sequence when you have the supreme commanders overseeing a live battle from the safety of a remote location. They are usually based in a bunker overseeing a very large-scale map with a large number of staff moving various representations of the armed forces on the said map. The staff are wearing headsets and receiving information directing their movements from those who have direct link with the action or personnel actually present on the battlefield. The primitive presentation of this data allows those in an overhead gantry to view proceedings and make the necessary decisions to steer the course of the battle and communicate the necessary directions, orders and information to those at the frontline. Battle of Britain always springs to mind for me, but there again I am British, so please excuse me as we always mention our finest moment at every opportunity.

Looking at this activity objectively we can see that it is data gathering and processing, it’s crude, but it’s effective and gives those that need to know crucial information the ability to make informed decisions, and quickly.

So let us zoom forwards 60 years.  The battlefield is now the worksite, the armed forces are the contractors and the commanders are based in their site cabins wondering what the hell is going on out there, why is the project behind, why is it costing so much and why can’t anyone explain what all that expensive machinery is doing.

First thing we do within this civil construction site model is to install Machine Control on the excavators, dozers, graders, scrapers etc. We can now ensure that the operators have the correct 3D design data with which to complete their task. They can proceed in the knowledge that they are following approved data to dig, level, drill, pile etc and do not have to rely on the guidance of ground personnel (banksmen etc).  The efficacy of Machine Control is well understood in terms of what it can offer the operator, but what about its contribution to the site surveyors and planners?

Well any Machine Control system worth its salt will produce a progress map. This is a real time updated and recorded status of the job progress and will report the position of the work done and its accuracy relative to the original design. This data can be downloaded and used to document the job and allows site work planning to be completed more accurately and effectively.

But what I am suggesting here is a manual download of the data, done at the end of the shift / week and this requires visiting each machine with a recording device to do so (e.g. USB). This can be a right pain, especially on large-scale construction sites where just finding the right machine presents its own challenges.

So let’s add a telemetry option to each of our machines. We can now automatically download or stream the progress and see the real-time status of what work the machine is doing. This isn’t just one way. In addition to viewing current design status we can update the 3D design data from our bunker, sorry site office. I know this sounds obvious, but when you have a large site with many machines, the task of manually downloading this information is onerous; this translates to time consumption and expense. If we progress with our model to the next logical step then let’s have the machines not only accessible to the site supervisors, but talking to each other as well. (I know some Machine Control system manufacturers already provide such a solution, but I am trying to build up towards the big picture).

What are the points of Machine Control systems talking to each other? Well in its most basic format it will simply indicate what work has been done and what hasn’t – operators can move to areas (or be directed via the command centre who can see all this information as well) in the safe knowledge that they aren’t wasting time reworking something that was done 30 minutes earlier. It can indicate who else is on the jobsite and whether there may be any safety issues due to machine proximity. Companies such as Trimble Navigation, Carlson Software, and Topcon already offer a version of this communication facility within their product range.

So far we are focusing only on the machines doing the work that necessitate machine guidance and control, but what of the other machines working on the job site such as the articulated dump trucks, wheel loaders, rollers, compactors, haulage trucks etc? Let’s take our model one step further and provide these machines with GPS positioning and command and control reporting. Some of these machines may already have some form of instrumentation and monitoring installed such as weighing on the wheel loaders (calculates the load of the bucket contents) and weighing on the dump trucks. All of this information can be relayed back to the command and control centre so that total knowledge of all vehicle location and activity is possible. Knowing details about the material extracted and where it is going to (waste or stock) can give real time calculation of costs and management of the materials. If this is all linked in to the main stock supplies then these can be inspected to see if the relevant materials are in stock ready for supply to the next phase of the construction – e.g. building up road foundation layers.  This allows for real time planning and modification of the project model giving a continuously updated forecast for the job completion and what needs doing to get you there.  This information can also be used such that machines can be contacted automatically to inform them that they are required to be at a certain location at a certain time to receive another load for transportation, start work on the next excavating / dozing / grading phase etc. Think of the possibilities.

Imagine you are sitting in the site office, you have all this information within your grasp, look at the desktop monitor and see all the job site activity, see what material has been removed and where it is going, check current stocks and have them automatically replenished if they fall below what is required for the next job phase, you are only using machines as required and can plan to bring / hire in the machines as required to an accurate time and date – machine hire and transportation is expensive, you want minimum downtime. Imagine the power and efficiency! Many machine control manufacturers are working towards this and can offer command and control in various formats, but not as the complete suite for all site vehicles, only those that fall in their existing product range portfolio are covered, and there is nothing wrong with that, you can’t do everything. This brings me on to my last part of this story

Some of the vehicles I have mentioned do not fall into the standard machine guidance and control genre: articulated dump trucks, wheel loaders, rollers, compactors, haulage trucks etc. Yes they can have GPS installed to give vehicle position and they may have existing instrumentation (weighing) that can provide valuable information to the site office, but how do they transfer the? Telemetry within weighing instrumentation is nothing new, but integrating it within a complete command and control system is. To get the information onto the network requires knowledge of the network protocol. So far the models I have described are dependent upon a single manufacturer providing a solution that only his machines can work with, but we don’t want that!!

We want all machines and systems talking to each other using the same language. This will require the industry itself to form its own working party coalition and produce a command and control protocol that can be shared with all, however I suspect that will be some time yet.

In the meantime both Prolec, Ltd. and Carlson Software have already embraced the philosophy of OPA (Open Position Architecture) where we use any positioning system to input the data to our products and are now leading the way in integrating a complete command and control protocol – known as Heartbeat – to allow our products to talk to each other with the ambition of creating the complete interconnected site monitoring system.