Caterpillar released a new collision avoidance system called Proximity Awareness, which is designed for surface vehicles. According to the company, the system, which is a part its MineStar Detect capability set, uses the latest peer-to-peer communications leveraged by the automotive industry, delivers fast and reliable communications between vehicles and presents collision avoidance information to operators without the need for a radio.
The Proximity Awareness system can be fitted to light vehicles and to any brand of surface mining equipment. Its display can store up to 24 hours of incident data, which is sent to the office for storage and analysis by using communications hot spots on site. According to the company, Cat MineStar Fleet, Proximity Awareness and Object Detection can run on a single, in-cab display.
The Proximity Awareness system also retains many of the features of the company’s previous system, including avoidance zones, speed zones, highly configurable machine envelopes and projected paths, operator notifications, incident capture and playback for training or incident reconstruction.
The Proximity Awareness system presents information to the operator via a graphic display in the cab. The system provides three onboard alarming levels, which range from low to critical. Low priority indicates the projected path of a machine is on course to collide with another machine, while critical alarms indicate when two or more machines have their closest zones intersect, Cat reports. Alarm filters can also be implemented between machines to silence non-critical warnings.
