User's Manual

Collision Avoidance System: CAS-CAM/RF® Operating Instructions
Document Number: CAS-CAM_RF Operating Instructions (with FCC
precautions)_18June2010.doc
Page 13 of 126
Issue: E
2 SYSTEM OVERVIEW
2.1 Introduction
Since the advent of large mining trucks there has been an ongoing problem with collisions
resulting from poor external vision and limited maneuverability. This has resulted in a very
high incidence of accidents where large mining trucks collide with other vehicles, items of
plant and occasionally people. Over the last 10 years in Australian open cut coal mines in
the states of New South Wales and Queensland, 147 collisions have been reported
involving large mining equipment. Of these, a large proportion has been the result of poor
visibility (see Figure 1). Remarkably there have been few fatalities but property damage
and lost productivity has been significant.
The only protection against collisions in the blind areas of a truck at the moment are
procedural or "soft" barriers, such as no-go zones for Light Vehicles, standard parking and
start-up procedures, and audible reversing alarms. Even with these procedural controls
and noisy reversing alarms in place, the problem of Heavy Vehicle collisions has not been
eliminated. In addition to the requirement for an improved collision avoidance system, the
noise from these smart reversing alarms have recently come under review in mines
operating in close proximity to residential areas.
Even if the Heavy Vehicle driver could be provided with 360 degree unlimited vision
around the Heavy Vehicle, this would still not be adequate because of the vehicle size.
The driver would only be able to ‘look’ in a limited number of directions at once with the
potential for also creating distractions from safe driving.
An improved approach is to provide enhanced driver vision supplemented by an automatic
detection system that looks in all high risk directions at once, identifies potential problems
and attracts the driver’s attention to those areas where potential collisions could occur. In
addition, a further level of effectiveness is to provide warning information to both the Heavy
Vehicle driver and the objects/personnel at risk, as any hazardous situation involving two
parties, in which one party does not have the ability to take action, is inherently unsafe.
As part of the ongoing commitment to improving safety and productivity through the
application of innovative technology, Advanced Mining Technologies (AMT) in conjunction
with CSIRO Exploration and Mining has developed such a Collision Avoidance System
(CAS) aimed at greatly improving Heavy Vehicle safety and eliminating the need for
audible reversing alarms.
The CAS technology utilises state of the art colour video cameras with an LCD video
Display Unit as a vision aid (CAS-CAM
®
) and Radio Frequency (RF) transmitters and
receivers for automatic object proximity detection and classification (CAS-RF
®
). The
combined video camera and RF technologies form the CAS-CAM/RF
®
System.