Autonomous off-highway vehicles are a growing presence around the globe, from Norwegian mines to Brazilian sugar cane fields, and while limited access sites foster more controllable environments, rough and tumble usage raises a host of other challenges.
While the trend of autonomous driving is also catching on in off-highway vehicles, the use cases are very different compared to on-road vehicles where the main purpose is to move from Point A to Point B on their own with help of onboard sensors and systems.
In off-highway vehicles, the components of automated driving are mainly intended for an assisted or autonomous operation and not only for the autonomous movement from one place to the next. Automation in off-highway therefore often goes beyond “automated driving” and the automation of the process requires additional efforts but sometimes even leads to higher benefits than solely automating the driving function.