Cutting it fine with sat-nav dozer guidance

Setting rovers on the South of Shamka construction site.

The readout is done by rotary encoder which can be absolute or incremental using light and dark radial bands. In the latter case, the circles spin rapidly, reducing angle measurement to electronic measurement of time differences.

The base station can run on large car-type batteries, meaning the surveyor can leave it anywhere on site and then come back later to find that the corrections have been done.

SATTELITE
Interestingly, whenever equipment that uses satellite positioning is written about, it is usually referred to as being ‘GPS’, though in fact pretty much all of the systems from any of the manufacturers in construction is mentioned, what is being referred to is a technology that can not only pick up the Global Positioning System craft, but also the Russian GLONASS (derived from Global Navigation Satellite System) for increased accuracy.

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Hales points out that while having the extra satellites is useful in the city, it is not so necessary in wide open desert, as this site is, because the receivers can easily ‘see’ the sky, and so track the satellites.

FUTURE
While not employed on this site yet, or indeed anywhere in the Emirates as far as we know, the fully automatic systems referred to at the beginning of this article is very much a reality in other parts of the world. The advantages are obvious – there is no chance of operator fatigue, and accuracy is limited only by mistakes in the original engineering drawings. There are plans to get such a machine up and running over here. “We want to fit total control to a Cat D6T” says Hales.

This model has modern joystick control as well as electronically controlled powershift transmission. Of course, at the moment it is inconceivable that there would be no operator, but perhaps in the near future there is no reason why he would actually be needed to sit on the machine, as all the monitoring and adjustments can be made from the ground with a remote control.

One computer could be used to drive packs of machines together, so there will always be synergy across the entire fleet, as the computer will understand implicitly what the entire fleet is doing. Imagine how much more productive a road building site would be with such a package.

Back in the here and now, the systems that are available today can be further enhanced for fine grading with the addition of rotating lasers which can ensure millimeter-perfect grading, even when cutting a slope.

In short, it is a wonder that, given the obvious benefits in speed and efficiency that more contractors are not using it already.