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Sandvik’s Automated Loader Can Navigate A Glass Maze

Here’s something impressive to hype up your day. Global engineering firm Sandvik has created a new power loader construction vehicle. Not impressive enough? Here’s the hook: it’s driverless. Driverless passenger vehicles are one thing, but can we automate our construction equipment? Sandvik sure thinks so, which is why they’ve been doing it for a few shots shy of 20 years.

To show off the skill and precision with which the on-board computer can navigate the loader, Sandvik placed the vehicle within a massive maze constructed of glass sheets. One errant twitch, and the whole thing would come crashing down, loudly and messily.

Using a vast array of sensors, gyroscopes, and light detectors, the loader navigated the entire maze without a single scratch on any of the glass panes, even when the testers shut off the lights in the warehouse. And at the end of it all, just to prove that things really could’ve gone south, Sandvik’s own CEO Björn Rosengren hopped in and crushed the entire maze.

The benefit of these automated vehicles, besides the obvious one of not needing to send people into mines, is that they can learn and map out a mineshaft the first time they enter it. With the same deftness displayed here, they can navigate the shafts without disturbing any of the walls or structures, preventing accidents.

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