THIS WEBSITE USES COOKIES

We use cookies to personalise content, to provide social media features, and to analyse our traffic. By choosing 'allow all cookies', you consent to our cookies.
To find out more, read our privacy policy and cookie policy.

Training

Empowering Tomorrow’s Engineers: The MORE project’s final event presents innovations in heavy-duty mobile machinery

The MORE project, an innovative initiative funded by the European Union, celebrated the culmination of its European Industrial Doctorate (EID) research and training program at a successful final event. The event showcased the achievements of 8 early-stage researchers (ESRs) who presented key outcomes from their individual projects addressing challenges in the construction, logistics, and forestry sectors.

MORE – Educating Europe`s Future Engineers in Next Generation Heavy Duty Mobile Machinery: Artificial Intelligence driven Robotisation, Energy Efficiency and Process Optimisation – is the first industry-academia partnership to jointly educate researchers on heavy-duty mobile machinery. It addresses the need for dramatic improvements in heavy-duty mobile machinery (HDMM) and fill the gap in related research and training. Over the past four years, the MORE ESRs have been equipped with a set of research skills including robotics, machine learning, energy systems, as well as transferable skills such as entrepreneurship and career management.

Held in Helsinki, Finland from 24 – 26 October, the MORE project’s final event marked a significant milestone in enhancing productivity and efficiency across key industries. Around 40 participants joined the event including HDMM company representatives, PhD students and members from the MORE network. The consortium, comprised of respected heavy-duty mobile equipment companies including J. Deere, Liebherr, Bosch Rexroth, HIAB, and Volvo CE, collaborated with four specialised academic groups to nurture a new generation of engineers equipped with cutting-edge knowledge and skills.

In addition to keynote lectures and a site visit to Aalto Robot Learning Lab, the event highlighted the accomplishments of the ESRs, unveiling innovative solutions resulting from digitalisation and artificial intelligence. The recordings from the MORE ESR presentations are available online.

Professor Reza Ghabcheloo, coordinator of the MORE project, Tampere University, shared his satisfaction with the ESRs’ journeys, stating, “This has been a very successful industrial doctorate program, we have achieved our goals, industry is happy of the results and would like to build a similar project, doctoral students are happy and wanted by industry after MORE.”

As Europe anticipates a future shaped by technology and human creativity, the MORE project exemplifies the synergy between academia and industry. This collaboration fosters a generation of engineers ready to leave a lasting impact on heavy-duty mobile machinery and the industries it serves. The ESRs have demonstrated that innovation has no boundaries when fueled by dedication and cooperation.

The MORE consortium at the final event in Espoo, Helsinki Finland

Paolo Forte on secondment at Liebherr-Werk Bischofshofen GmbH

Paolo, our MORE Early Stage Researcher 3, moved to Liebherr-Werk Bischofshofen GmbH located in Bischofshofen, Austria for his secondment. The Liebherr Group is a family-operated technology enterprise with an extensively varied range of products, encompassing a total of 13 distinct product segments. Liebherr has grown to become a global leader in a diverse range of industries, including construction machinery, mining equipment, aerospace technology, maritime cranes, and household appliances.

Paolo will work at Liebherr from 01.08.2023 until 31.12.2023. During this time, he will investigate his material flow planning, coordination, and optimization algorithms for fleets of heterogeneous autonomous HDMMs for real-world applications. The secondment will provide Paolo with real-world scenarios to test material flow coordination and optimization research concepts in the field of construction site automation, while Liebherr will benefit from the research insights that may help their future business and research collaborations.

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!  

Second Industry Workshop held online

The second Industry Workshop was organised by Örebro University on the 3. – 4. March 2021. The focus of the two day workshop was on Autonomous Navigation of HDM Machinery and consisted of a number of presentations from experts in the field.

In total, there were eight presentations:

  • Autonomous HDM operation  – Reza Ghabcheloo (TUT)
  • Model predictive control autonomous haulers – Johan Sjöberg (VCE)
  • Positioning and mapping for field robots – Juhana Ahtiainen (GIM Robotics)
  • Robot Operating System (ROS) – Henrik Andreasson (ORU)
  • Fully Automated Harbours: Position Measurement of the Container Handling Machine – Pekka Yli-Paunu (HIAB)
  • Under the Radar – System-Level Self-Supervision for Perception and Navigation – Ingmar Posner (Oxford)
  • Human Motion Prediction for save and efficient operation in shared environments – Andrey Rudenko (Bosch)
  • Decision making under uncertainty – Joni Pajarinen (TUD & Aalto)

The workshop was closed with a round table between the speakers and Early Stage Researchers to present their topics and ask any open questions in relation to the presented topics. In total, MORE will organise five Industry Workshops with the objective to provide ESRs and other experts with the knowledge and the tools to better understand the current and future challenges in the research topics covered by MORE.

First MORE training event held online

The first MORE training week was organised by Tampere University (TAU) from the 14. – 16. September 2020. Due to the COVID 19 outbreak and all the travel restrictions MORE was required to organise the Introduction Week as an online meeting. Organising virtual meetings brings new challenges especially when the participants have never met before in person. However, the MORE project sees the first training event as successful given the difficult circumstances and saw very nice discussions on the research topics with the consortium members.

MORE managed to organise a successful three days online event with a variable program; a good compilation of technical lectures, soft skills and project management. All project beneficiaries and partners attended the online event. The seven recruited Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) attended the Introduction week. The main objective of the MORE Introduction week was to introduce all ESRs to the scientific and technological challenges in the HDM machinery sector.

Day 1 – Icebreaker
The first day of the meeting focused on introducing the project and the MORE ESRs. Each ESR prepared a three minute presentation to present their individual projects. The participants gave feedback on the talks and had the opportunity to ask questions.  The company partners Deere, Liebherr and HIAB also introduced their organisations and roles in the project.

Day 2 – Automation and Autonomy: Today and Tomorrow 

The second day consisted of further company introductions from Bosch Rexroth, Volvo, Novatron and GIM who are all involved in the MORE project. Presentations on mobile and autonomous mobile machines were held to bring the innovations being researched in MORE closer to the ESRs.

Day 3 – Dialogue

The final day of the meeting aimed to facilitate creating a dialogue and networking between the participants, especially the ESRs. For this, the ESRs received training on the principles of dialogue in action which is extremly important in online meetings. Afterwards, TAU organised online “sauna sessions”to bring participants together in smaller teams for deep discussions on the different ESR projects.

In the coming events we will give more floor to ESRs to present their research results and work progress and to obtain valuable input from their supervisors, industrial collaborator and external experts.

MORE Kick Off Meeting

MORE officially started on the first of January 2020. The whole consortium met online for their kick off meeting. All the partners are ready to contribute to the success of the project.