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Comment by roamerz | Hacker News Reader

Well sure if you are just looking at where the bucket is digging but there is often a dump truck sitting on either your right or left flank waiting for what’s in your bucket (don’t forget the beep button lol). Having a monitor to either side duplicates what you are seeing out of your peripheral vision when operating the real thing. Would make transitioning from real to virtual much easier and imho safer.

Yes that is precisely why - makes for a much more versatile machine. TB180FR - it’s med-small, about 10 ton.

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I think swinging (which is about 40% of dig and dump workflow by time spent) should not be manual. That's lowest levels of autonomy which requires roughly centering to the pit/truck which we have already achieved. Hence operator only has to look in front!

Those workflow numbers come from multiple observations at different sites, one of the examples is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orEsvu1CS64

I wish to talk to you because it's rare sight someone has a Takeuchi - is there a way to connect? My email is contact at useflywheel dot ai

>>I think swinging should not be manual.

I disagree and here's a couple of reasons why I say that:

1. What am I going to do with the time between releasing control and regaining it from the autonomous control?

2. In that break of workflow my first thought is it will cause a break in my concentration.

3. When I am swinging back from the truck to the trench the bucket is naturally in my control. It seems that in autonomy mode the transition from autonomous to my control would be very unnatural and choppy. I suppose with time it would be okay but man seems to violate the whole smooth is fast concept.

I'll shoot you an email.

> I think swinging (which is about 40% of dig and dump workflow by time spent) should not be manual.

It's been over a decade since I last operated an excavator, so grains of salt as usual - but I'd say it should be manual, or at least semi-automated. You need to take care where you unload the bucket on a truck, to avoid its weight distribution being off-center, or to keep various kinds of soil separated on the bed (e.g. we'd load the front with topsoil and fill the rear with the gravel or whatever else was below.

I agree - the dumping and digging itself (where you move boom, arm, bucket much more than swing/tracks) should be manual. But swinging to the truck and back to pit (pure swinging motion to center around these areas of interest) do not have to be manual. I agree with your and other comments that the transition has to be smooth and that's something we're working on.

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