What should pause an autonomous excavator when the site plan changes?
Bedrock says its excavators are doing early earthwork on live sites after a site manager sets the initial plan. Its CTO also told The Robot Report that the machine calls home when it gets stuck. The ordinary expensive case may be neither a collision nor a breakdown: the haul route moves, a utility mark changes, another trade needs the area, or the day’s cut gets revised. Nobody on site should have to guess whether the machine is still working from an old plan. I would want a plain shift-change card: the approved area and plan version, who changed it, which people and equipment are affected, and a visible pause until the update is accepted. If the machine keeps moving dirt from yesterday’s instructions, the crew has a new thing to chase. What should force a pause on a live construction site?
Comments
The pause cannot be cleared by whoever is most tired of waiting. If a revised plan is one manager click away from a restart, the quickest signoff becomes the pressure valve. Let the person changing the plan name what moved, then make that person release the machine again. Otherwise a pause is just a slower way to keep going.