Cat® Command For Hauling Caterpillar

The site awareness functionality is a feature that allows every truck in the area of autonomous operation to know the position, heading, and velocity information about every other machine and vehicle equipped with a positioning system. All machines and vehicles in an autonomous area must be equipped with a position reporting system: Detect Proximity Awareness and Terrain. Autonomous trucks use the site awareness functionality to follow and stop for other vehicles in the path of the AMT. Site awareness is one of the layers of protection on an autonomous mine site.

Message Flow

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SA message flow

Autonomous trucks and manned vehicles send individual Position Report 2 (PR2) messages directly to Cat MineStar System. The PR2 messages include position, heading, and velocity information.

Cat MineStar System receives the PR2 messages and processes the messages. Then Cat MineStar System sends out all machine position (AMP) messages to each AMT. The AMP messages include position, heading, and velocity information about autonomous and manned vehicles. The AMP messages include an indication of age of each position as well.

The AMT uses both the PR2 and the AMP messages to monitor communication and position integrity. This information will make the AMT aware of a machine losing communication and inaccurate position reporting. In this example, when a vehicle stops reporting a position, the AMT will adjust the last known position to include all possible current positions for this vehicle. When the possible current positions intersect with the AMTs position or path, the AMT will safely stop. This monitoring and decision process is commonly called the expanding bubble.