Radarize

Purpose and goal:

The primary goal of Radarize is navigation and human detection for mining vehicles in smoke. We aim to reach a step change in perception for navigation under low-visibility conditions.

Mining vehicles must have precise and reliable localisation both under nominal conditions and when visibility is low, independent of any infrastructure. They must also be able to reliably detect the position of obstacles, and especially people, also when visibility is low.

The project is centred around using radar sensors to reach these objectives, given their insensitivity to smoke, dust, and fog. Expected results and effects:

Applications of Radarize´s results include autonomous and manual operation in dust (for example, after blasting, or stirring up dust in earth moving applications), driving through smoke to evacuate staff from a fire emergency, and in inclement weather (snow, fog, etc).

The project will contribute to a safer workplace: both in terms of fire safety, and in terms of reducing strain from underground work and exposure to dust and particles.

We will increase production efficiency by reducing downtimes that currently occur when visibility is low due to dust, water vapour, or weather. Approach and implementation:

We will develop navigation algorithms for both recent 2D radars and novel 4D radars, extending our state-of-the-art 2D navigation and develop fully-3D radar mapping, including fusion of live sensor data with existing maps. We will extend people and obstacle tracking to low-visibility conditions by incorporating radar cues and cross-modal learning from other sensor types.

We will push development of 4D radar, including optimisation of low-level radar signal processing, for denser and more high-quality data. The technologies will tested and evaluated in real environments.