Remote operations.. the next step toward AI

Caterpillar is now offering remote operating controls for their dozers, excavators, and wheel loaders.  
 

Caterpillar command technology

The equipment cab low looks like this:

Its an interesting move.  Now an operator can operate a dozen different machines at the same time anywhere in the country from an air conditioned office.  Imagine being able to drive your truck up, switch to the excavator, load your own load, then switch back to the truck and never leave your office.
 

The controls supposedly mimic the actual feel of the direct controls.  
 

Their approach is interesting too.  They are marketing it primarily as a safety idea, not productivity.  I suspect this is so they can combat the battle that will inevitably ensue from OSHA and their issues with operating equipment that is not in the direct line of site of the operator.

Its a pretty interesting approach.  Better (at this point) than autonomous.

Interesting. I can definitely see the benefits.

I for one would like to welcome our new digital overlords.

This isn't AI. Not even close. 
 

I'm not even sure it's autonomy from the description. Sounds like remote control. Basically, a lot of these controls were drive by wire already so it's just making them drive by wireless and adding cameras.

It's still a 1:1 relationship of operator to equipment, so if you have one person operating a truck and a loader you'll either have to pass off control to someone else (what does that look like?) or else you're only running your equipment at half capacity. More likely you'll still have specialists, as truck drivers aren't loader operators. 

I can certainly see the benefits for operator fatigue, but trying to keep the workplace safe for the meat sacks who do have to be on the site is going to be exciting. 

Interesting... I wonder how far remotely-piloted commercial  passenger aircraft are? 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I didn't say it was AI. I said it was a step towards it. 
 

Its easy to imagine how these remote stations can capture data and record it for the purpose of ultimately being used to guide machine logic with no human. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Every machine has a lot of idle time.   When a truck is being loaded, the driver sits in it doing absolutely nothing. When the truck leaves to dump, the excavator operator sits and waits. A lot of machine operators also have a CDL (they need them to move machines to the next job).

On medium and smaller jobs, the actual operating time on the machine is never 8 hours. Might be an hour or two per day.
 

There is no reason 1 man can't do more than 1 job.
 

...and honestly, I think remote operation is far more viable as an interim step than AI autonomy.  It lets machines learn exactly how an actual operator feels the controls, and makes AI much more saleable later.

If you walked onto a job site today and tried to sell a fully autonomous machine, you'd be run off. No matter how perfectly it functioned.

If they spend 10 or 20 years offering remote operating services, an autonomous machine will be readily accepted when the time comes to advance to that step. 

And so, we are just days away....

... from THIS!

A friend works in high end banking administration. She complained to me recently that new procedures were clearly designed so that the machines could learn everything she does.   She and her colleagues were literally training the machines that would eventually put them out of work.

Same idea. 
 

No reason for a computer programmer to try to program a machine to act like an equipment operator. They are clueless. Have the engineer design the machine so the equipment operators can train the machine directly.

SV reX said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Every machine has a lot of idle time.   When a truck is being loaded, the driver sits in it doing absolutely nothing. When the truck leaves to dump, the excavator operator sits and waits. A lot of machine operators also have a CDL (they need them to move machines to the next job).

On medium and smaller jobs, the actual operating time on the machine is never 8 hours. Might be an hour or two per day.
 

There is no reason 1 man can't do more than 1 job.
 

I am assuming that you have more trucks than excavators. It doesn't make sense for the excavator to wait for a single truck to make a run and return, especially if that round trip takes longer than the time required to load a truck. So if you add one more truck, you have doubled the work getting done. Keep adding trucks until the returning one one has to wait, but there is never a second in line. That's your most efficient truck:excavator ratio.

I know most equipment operators can be drivers, there's a reason I said that drivers may not be equipment operators :)

The concept of having the vehicles "learn" from their operators is the same one Tesla uses in trying to make FSD work. No need for remote operation to do that, just logging and communication. And, well, it's not working that well for Tesla. Bankers, working in a much more consistent and constrained environment, are a lot easier to replace with basically a rule set. 

I think Caterpillar's claims (faster return to work after blasting, less operator fatigue, etc) have a lot of merit. Camera viewing can put the operator's eyes in places they can't be otherwise. It will be interesting to see how the industry reacts, and if the ROI is there. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Of course on a large project like mine we have many times more trucks than excavators. I don't think it is targeted at a project where productivity can literally be measured by the inches of the swing of the arm.

But the rest of my 40+ years in construction?  Absolutely. Every single job had equipment sitting idle every single day. 
 

That's why I said medium to smaller jobs. 

Now your boss can literally stand over your shoulder.

We were digging out the muck in the bottom of an old pond a few days ago, and I was giving a tour to an engineer. He asked "How do they know when they've reached the bottom?"  My answer was that an operator can feel the difference through the controls. 
 

That's stuff that would be really hard for a programmer to program, but really easy for a machine to measure if there was an actual skilled operator in the remote seat who knew the feel.

I think the remote operations would wear out people very quickly. The kind of people who operate equipment would die quickly of production fatigue if they were sitting in an office.  They enjoy the outdoors, some level of independence, smoking, drinking, and breaking stuff.  They are not office environment people. 
 

But that's ok if the endgame isn't locked into having human operators in the seats. 

Racebrick said:

Now your boss can literally stand over your shoulder.

SV reX said:

I think the remote operations would wear out people very quickly. The kind of people who operate equipment would die quickly of production fatigue if they were sitting in an office.  They enjoy the outdoors, some level of independence, smoking, drinking, and breaking stuff.  They are not office environment people. 
 

But that's ok if the endgame isn't locked into having human operators in the seats. 

Very much like the difference between working in a company's IT department where you spend part of your time dealing with that company's outages/support, and working in a ticketing-driven customer support department where you're dealing with various customer's problems queued up back to back nonstop all day, ask me how I know...

Somehow I think the operators would have mixed feelings about being automated entirely out of work though.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Sure they will!

Do they get to vote?

Caterpillar makes several models of autonomous haul trucks already.

Workers: They can't outsource my job. How are they going to drive the truck/dozer/whatever from Overseas?

The market: MF, watch!

In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :

Heavy equipment operations can and will be outsourced/ automated. Much earlier than automated cars. 
 

Getting into existing buildings for renovations... much harder. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

I want to revisit your earlier mention of a 1:1 ratio operator to equipment.  Its really not that at all.  

Every job site has equipment sitting idle which could be put to use remotely. 
 

That compounds when you consider  large operator centers. If a nationwide operating center was remotely operating equipment, perhaps 20% of the jobs in the nation would be shut down at any one time because of weather. No problem for a remote operating center- work on a different job. Big problem for an excavating contracting who has to pay those guys to not work.

It also opens the door to remote operations in locations that have lower salary ranges, or more workers available. Operator salaries are $70K and up, and we still have 40% shortages of labor in many places.  With remote operators, the salary of every operator could be lowered by 50%, and not have shortages of workers. 
 

Remote operations are a win now, and can easily grow into autonomous operations in the future. 

SV reX said:

:

Now an operator can operate a dozen different machines at the same time anywhere in the country from an air conditioned office. 

Now an operator can operate a dozen different machines at the same time anywhere from a 3rd world country, at 3rd world wages from an air conditioned office

In reply to John Welsh :

Correct.