ConExpo is just around the corner, bringing to mind the changes that have been wrought in an industry certainly more noted for its conservatism than forays into the ragged edge of the technological envelope. You have to wonder what got into the equipment designers’ thermos bottles at the dawn of the new century, giving rise to a tsunami of technological change that boggles the mind. When will this slow down and allow us to catch up? My suggestion…don’t hold your breath.
We Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet
Look at it like an aircraft taxiing onto the runway and adding power for takeoff, where the really hard part is overcoming inertia and gaining enough speed for liftoff. It’s after that things begin to get moving. That’s where we are today with technology—off the ground, gear and flaps up, and headed on course…but bound for where?
This is an especially interesting question when you realize its full implications in the context of construction, where the limitations are no longer so much in the tools we use as in our imagination and desire to wring every last morsel of potential from newfound capabilities that we have only just begun to explore.
The moment the equipment manufacturers dipped into their grab bag of tricks and emerged with digital replacements for their timeworn analog mechanical systems we crossed a magical threshold and stepped into a realm of incredible—I’m tempted to say infinite—possibilities bound only by our ties to the past.
Ponder the following, if you will: The astronauts who went to and walked on the moon did so with orders of magnitude less the computing power we carry in our cell phones. Until three decades ago, the ability to determine your location in three-dimensional space was a laborious process that could take hours, and, even when GPS units became available to the public, it was another decade before the government saw fit to stop dithering the signal and allow us access to really useful levels of precision. Today you can go down to your local shopping center and buy a computer, software, and peripheral equipment that would rival the best on the planet when the Berlin Wall came down, and you have in your grader or excavator or dozer or loader more intelligence in its bare-bones form than the Boeing 747 had when it came into service.
So What Do You Want To Do Today?
How about seeing not only where you are but also where you plan to be when the job is done? Watch any TV show on modern fighter aircraft and see what magic resides in the systems at the pilot’s fingertips and, in some cases, even beyond his conscious control. Look at the wealth of information available for call-up on a multifunction display or even the aircraft’s windscreen or canopy. While the aircraft is waffling around in the dark of night, or plunging through fog and clouds, sensors of various kinds are able to acquire detailed images in near-daylight clarity and display them in any of several ways that allow the pilot to perform the mission with confidence and precision. If this isn’t enough, the pilot can access data from the aircraft’s radar or threat-warning sensors and project them as overlays to visually enhanced imagery to aid in the solution of complex tactical problems. Do these capabilities seem too far-fetched for dirt-moving activities? They’re not. In fact they are very much within the capabilities of equipment and technologies in use right now.
An increasing number of operators are making use of laser and GPS systems to guide or control blades, buckets, or the movement of entire machines, and typically these actions or guidance cues are displayed symbolically on a dash panel monitor. Pretty neat, but the same information could be placed on the windshield, presenting the operator with a superimposed view of where to go and what to do to achieve whatever the plan calls for. How much more difficult is it to imagine the potential advantages of adding video or infrared imagery to aid operators in confined or low-visibility situations?
Most of us have to gulp at the thought of remotely controlled equipment running around a job site, but do you doubt that this is possible and in certain applications desirable if not downright necessary? Already this is happening in farming operations, where tractors grind their way over hundreds or even thousands of acres under GPS control, making furrows or laying down seed. Closer to our activities are the varieties of remotely controlled robots used to work with dangerous materials or in lethally contaminated areas, so how much sense does it make for us to put operators at even a slight risk by having them work in contaminated soils when we have the ability to accomplish these tasks remotely or even robotically?
The Moon, Mars, and Beyond
Several years ago when I visited a mining site in Eastern Arizona to watch dozers cutting haul roads using GPS instead of stakes for grade control, I found myself captivated by a bumper sticker on the back of a pickup truck that read, “Mine Earth First…Then the Universe.” Now when we see images from those little buggies bopping along over the surface, the applicability of our emerging technology to what that bumper sticker had to say came back to me in bold relief. If we are to send explorers to work and live on Mars, our first challenge will be to construct and operate a way station on the Moon. Can you guess what it will take to build that Moon base and then the one on Mars? Can you dig it?