Ongoing Projects

NEXT. Next generation of mobile walking EXcavaTors (Innosuisse 117.624 IP-ENG)

Operating the mobile walking excavators from KAISER AG requires years of experience to work safely and without accidents in steep terrain. The increasing shortage of skilled operators is a limiting factor for boosting sales and, consequently, KAISER's success in the global market. KAISER AG is addressing these challenges through innovations in training (VR simulator) and operation (assistance system).

The economic goals of the project are to gain market share and increase the revenue and profit of KAISER AG. By solving various technological challenges, the barrier to entry for new machine operators will be lowered while simultaneously enhancing the operability and safety of the machines. This will be achieved through the following interconnected approaches:

1. Development of a cost-effective Virtual Reality simulator for personalized driver training. The simulator will be capable of capturing the user's behavior and facial expressions so that a Large Language Model (LLM) can be used to provide targeted feedback and evaluations to the operator. The latest findings from AI research will be utilized and further developed for this purpose.
   
2. Parallel to the simulator, an assistance system will be developed. Using cost-effective vision sensors, the configuration of all the excavator’s joints will be estimated. Based on this information, a system will be developed to monitor and regulate the stability of the excavator in steep terrain. The challenges here include ensuring the robustness of the system for detecting all the excavator's joints and the applicability of the control algorithms to as many scenarios as possible that may occur during excavator operations.
   
3. KAISER AG will adapt the design of the undercarriage to enable the active control of the hydraulic cylinders, independent of the excavator's joint configuration.