Autonomous energy efficient wheel loader research at TUT

Future worksites will be occupied by different level of automation work machines. How these machines are working individually and how a fleet of these machines cooperates will be in focus of research and development work in the future. In this paper the studied off-road vehicle is a wheel loader. It can be controlled manually, remotely or autonomously. The control strategy of autonomous wheel loader is consisting of, e.g., static and dynamic mapping, path planning, obstacle observation and avoidance. In the autonomous machines and also in machines where operator assistance system is active the situational awareness is the key research field. Power management in hydraulic work machines are still active fields of research. Multiple architectures and configurations have been suggested concerning this area. In addition, implemented solutions that consider an entire machine are rarely presented. This paper introduces the research work of the control systems which are minimising the fuel consumption.