knowMORE: FAQ video series online

Have you ever wondered what our early stage researchers (ESRs) were are talking about when they mention optimised power management or what exactly perception sensors means? Have we ever used acronyms such as HDMM or BAGEL which just are not clear? Or have you ever wondered what the daily tasks or our ESRs are?

Our ESRs receive questions or are asked to explain parts of their research on a daily basis which may seem obvious to researchers in heavy duty machinery but for all us others can be overwhelming or difficult to follow. Based on this, the MORE ESRs have recorded the knowMORE series, a frequently asked question in video format answering the main FAQs they receive in an easy to follow way.

IFK 2022 – David presents an efficiency and cost analysis for an electrified telehandler

After an online version in 2020, the 13th International Fluid Power Conference (IFK) took place as an in-person event again this year in Aachen. Around 400 participants from industry and academia came together from June 13.-15. to discuss the latest developments in the hydraulics and pneumatics world. With a strong focus in this conference on heavy-duty mobile applications, David’s presentation on his work dealing with the electrified implements of a telehandler attracted many interested listeners and got a lot of positive resonance afterwards. David is looking forward to presenting further results of his studies on this at the next IEEE Global Fluid Power Society PhD Symposium in October.

Second annual MORE network event held in Sweden

The second annual MORE network event was organised by Örebro University in Sweden from the 18.-20. May 2022. During the annual network events the focus is to give all the MORE early stage researchers the opportunity their research results and work progress and to obtain valuable input from their supervisors, industrial collaborator and external experts.

The annual events are always combined with other activities, such as technical sessions about relevant topics, onsite visits as well as social networking activities. During this annual event, we received a lab tour through the AASS lab at Örebro Universtiy as well as a visit to Munktell Museum. Time was further devoted to the training of the MORE early stage researchers from partners within the network. This included sessions on Communication, dissemination and exploitation activities in MORE: As open as possible, as closed as necessary (Julia Götz, accelopment); Towards robot-, task- and environment-agnostic multi-robot fleet control (Federico Pecora, Associate Professor at Örebro University); and Ethics for Robotics & Automation (Masoumeh Mansouri, Assistant Professor at the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham).

We would like to thank Örebro University for hosting the meeting and for all participants for their active contributions and engagement during the meeting.

Tyrone starts his secondment at KAMAG Transporttechnik GmbH & Co.KG

Tyrone, our MORE Early Stage Researcher 1, moved to KAMAG Transporttechnik GmbH & Co.KG located in Ulm, Germany for his secondment. Together with the SCHEUERLE Fahrzeugfabrik, NICOLAS Industrie and TIIGER, KAMAG Transporttechnik forms the TII Group – Transporter Industry International. The TII Group is the world’s market leader in the development and production of heavy-duty vehicles equipped with hydraulically-supported pendulum axles. KAMAG is active in the production of industrial vehicles, modular transporters and vehicles for terminal logistics.

Tyrone will work at KAMAG from 01.02.2022 until 31.05.2022. During this time, he will investigate new potential business cases and business models for automated and/or autonomous ‘Swap Body Transporters’ and ‘Terminal Tractors’ offered by KAMAG. The secondment will provide Tyrone with practical exposure and an avenue to test business and management related research concepts in the field of terminal/yard logistics, while KAMAG will benefit from the research insights that may help their future business and research collaborations.

First face-to-face industry training held in Tampere

The MORE project has been running for nearly two years and due to travel restrictions, all meetings and trainings up to now have been held virtually until today. We finally had the opportunity to meet in person for the first time from the 15th-17th November 2021. In total, 23 members from the MORE consortium including the eight Early Stage Researchers met up for the 3rd Industry training event organised by TAU in Tampere, Finland.

The three-day training event included presentations from invited external speakers on Robotics, manipulator, trajectory optimization (Arun Singh, Univ. of Tartu) and a number of MORE network members on a number of relevant topics covering Hydraulics boom (Marcus Rösth, HIAB), Forestry Applications and Technologies (Timo Käppi, J. Deere), BIM in Infra Construction (Teppo Viinikka, Novatron), Control of Articulated Hydraulic Robotic Systems, (Janne Koivumäki Novatron), Operator assistance (Manuel Bös, Liebherr), Robot learning for heavy mobile machines (Nataliya Strokina / Reza Ghabcheloo,TAU) and Automation, Robotics in heavy machines (Christine Brach/Ulrich Lenzgeiger, Bosch Rexroth)

We also had the opportunity to visit our local hosts’ labs and demonstrators. TAU to showcase Robots in action in our RoboLab Tampere https://research.tuni.fi/robolabtampere/ At the end of each day, we held roundtable session to discuss the technical topics which were presented during the day.  In these discussion academia and industry collaboration was intensively elaborated. Being able to meet in person has provided the MORE members the possibility to get to know each other on a much more personal level and to strengthen team spirit. We would like to thank all the contributors to the Industry Day and are looking forward to MORE!  

Presentation at FPMC 2021, “Towards a Standard Taxonomy for Levels of Automation in Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery”

Our MORE Early Stage Researcher, Tyrone J. Machado presented a paper titled “Towards a Standard Taxonomy for Levels of Automation in Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery” at the ASME/Bath Symposium on Fluid Power and Motion Control (FPMC) 2021. 

We noticed a lack of commonly accepted definitions and taxonomies for levels of automation (LOA) in the heavy-duty mobile machinery (HDMM) industry/community. They rely on SAE J3016 from the automotive industry, which is unsuitable for HDMM because HDMM perform working activities or manipulation of external materials, in addition to driving activities. Thus, we propose a new two dimensional LOA matrix concept, with manipulation LOA on one dimension, and driving LOA on another dimension. 

The conference was held virtually from 19 to 21 October 2021 and the recording from Tyrone’s presentation is available to watch below.

Presentation on Autonomous Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery: A Multidisciplinary Collaborative Challenge by Tyrone J. Machado at IEEE-ICTE 2021

Tyrone held a presentation at the International Conference on Technology and Entrepreneurship IEEE-ICTE2021 in Track 6: Interconnected business models; open innovation in digital age; Digitalization of innovation, R&D and creativity processes held virtually from 24-27 August 2021. The paper titled “Autonomous Heavy-Duty Mobile Machinery: A Multidisciplinary Collaborative Challenge” was a joint effort by all the MORE Early Stage Researchers.

In the presentation, Tyrone introduces autonomous heavy-duty mobile machinery from a more general rather than technical perspective, and highlights the conceptual challenges that arise when transitioning from traditional machinery to autonomous machinery. The paper took a holistic and multidisciplinary view on the topic covering technical, economical and management perspectives.

David (ESR4) participated at the SICFP’21

The Scandinavian International Conference on Fluid Power (SICFP) is one of the major conferences in the fluid power community and was held for the 17th time on 1-2 June 2021. David, MORE’s early stage researcher 4, was one of the speakers, presenting his simulation work on an electro-hydraulic concept for improved energy-efficiency of the implements on heavy-duty mobile machines.  Even though the pandemic forced the participants to meet online instead of in Sweden at Linköping University, the conference offered David a good opportunity to present and discuss his research.  The fact that many other talks dealt with electrification and efficiency improvement as well showed that David is on a right track with his research.