Retrofit AI and automation: the future of construction and mining
Bibhrajit is the founder & CEO of SafeAI, a leader in autonomous heavy equipment. He got his start in autonomy during the early aughts at the DARPA Grand Challenge.
He went on to autonomous projects at Caterpillar, Ford, Faraday Future, and Apple before founding SafeAI in 2017.
SafeAI retrofits heavy vehicles with autonomous technology to make sites safer, more productive, and more cost-effective.
The CEO shared nostalgia about the 1980s “Transformers” series and looked into the future where SafeAI could help humans expand beyond our planet.
Making industry safer and more efficient
Since its founding in 2017, SafeAI has helped automate the work fleets for many of the world’s biggest names in mining and construction, including Rio Tinto, BHP, and more. And they are only just getting started.
SafeAI’s retrofit approach enables companies to upgrade their existing vehicles, lowering the barrier to entry for autonomous deployments.
The company is currently focused on the mining and construction industries. Still, it can potentially automate almost any industry that relies on large vehicles of all shapes and sizes.
“We directly go to these companies, take their existing vehicles, and when you say vehicles, we are talking about massive trucks, 200-, 300-, 400-ton trucks, those are we take this vehicle, we retrofit a bunch of sensors and technologies if you will and give it back to them. And these are fully autonomous. This means no remote control, human operator, or human oversight whatsoever,” explained Bibhrajit.
Moreover, the retrofit process is relatively quick, considering the size and complexity of the vehicles involved.
“So, usually what happens is set a send a team of, you know, engineers and operators, and they go there in about six weeks they will turn around 30 trucks to make it fully autonomous,” Bibhrajit noted.
SafeAI’s system bypasses cabin controls and taps directly into the vehicle’s electronic control unit (ECU). As Bibhrajit explains, the entire retrofit system is also entirely “fuel agnostic,” meaning that any vehicle type, in theory, could be converted using SafeAI’s innovative system.
There is a “use by date” of sorts for potential vehicles, however, as Bibhrajit described. It is usually only cost-effective to do so for vehicles less than 15 to 20 years old. Beyond that, the anticipated maintenance costs of the vehicle probably mean it is too near the end of its life.
From cradle-to-grave automation
Within this podcast, Bibrajit also gave us a glimpse into a future where the cradle-to-grave lifecycle of many products could, in theory, be fully automated, freeing human beings from the drudgery of manual jobs in fields like mining, construction, and delivery.
As Bibhrajit highlighted, it could be possible to have the entire cradle-to-grave lifecycle of a product entirely automated. From the raw material extraction to the factory floor and delivery to your door, automated machines could, literally and figuratively, do the heavy lifting.
Like many other aspects of automation in industry, this would greatly free humans from laborious, often dangerous tasks. The potential here is enormous if enough industries take up what SafeAI offers.
Source: Interesting Engineering
Boston Dynamics’ rival Unitree unleashes powerful robot dog that lifts 265 lbs
Retrofit AI and automation: the future of construction and mining