Abstract
Patent number 12158765 is assigned to Caterpillar (Peoria, Illinois, United Stat es).The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background informa tion supplied by theinventors: “Certain applications, such as strip mining, inv olve the transportation of aggregate material,such as ore, from a mining site t o a processing or shipping facility. Typical mining operations use guidedhaul t rucks that carry the extracted material from an extraction area or material sour ce to a depositionarea or a material sink. A typical large-scale mining operati on may include more than one material sourceand more than one material sink. Th e haul trucks used to transport the material may be autonomouslyguided, i.e., o perate without a driver. A fleet of haul trucks servicing a mine site may perfor m hundredsof trips daily, as some mining operations operate around the clock. T he loading of the aggregate materialonto the haul trucks is typically accomplis hed by use of wheeled loaders or excavators, material conveyors,shovels, and th e like. Detailed plans are put in place to manage these activities, ensuring tha t operatorsare moving the right amount of material to the right place at the ri ght time. Efficient assignment ofpersonnel and machines to various tasks may be a complex problem that may be very computationallyintensive.
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