The electric hum of a motor and the crunch of gravel under tires were the only audible sounds as a fully autonomous dump truck drove itself along a stretch of road up to a gravel pile at Volvo Construction Equipment’s customer center in Eskilstuna, Sweden.
Building on semi-autonomous technology that already has been deployed on mining sites, Volvo CE is working on prototype designs for fully autonomous equipment in quarrying and earthmoving applications. At a press event on Sept. 14, it showed off some of these latest inventions from the Volvo Concept Lab.