For Volvo CE, electrifying its construction machines is a vital step to reach its ambition to be 100% fossil-free by 2040. One example is the company’s electric wheeled excavators. What will they look like a few years from now? And considering the trend toward urbanization, how will the operator and pedestrians be able to safely interact with the machine and each other in a busy city environment? These questions triggered the Volvo CE design team to explore new creative dimensions, and EX03 – nicknamed Hazi – is the result. In Korean, Hazi is the peak of the summer season, which fits well since the machine marks an important milestone, being the company’s first fully electric medium-size excavator. The most striking feature with EX03 is the big screen in the back, where you normally see a counterweight. Is this just a crazy gimmick or a taste of what’s coming in the near future? Volvo CE chief designer Roland Schling will give you his view.

With the transition of conventional production systems in agriculture to highly automated and assisted cyber-physical production systems, the range of tasks and the required skills for operators have changed. By using fitting interaction forms and information, the HMI can support the operators in adapting to the new task profiles and requirements. The presentation will give an overview of the changes in competence requirements and discuss suitable forms of interaction within the Feldschwarm HMI, an interface concept optimized for the operation of autonomous machinery in agriculture.

In a world with more people, a less stable climate and shrinking land, agriculture machinery must constantly become more efficient. With the support of automation, leader machines will be able to fulfill wider missions in a shorter time. This will have consequences for work patterns and the HMI. The presentation will look at the development of classic multi-use components and their ability to evolve and support the need to do ever more with less.

Safety is still a critical issue on construction sites. An important factor in every risk analysis will always be moving construction machinery. The physical size of the machinery makes it difficult for operators to always maintain a complete overview of the surroundings. Therefore, environmental detection with optical and radio sensors can be a huge support to the operator. This presentation will describe how a system for environment detection works, what technical implications and challenges exist, what is today’s standard, and what additional features are to be expected in the near future with a culmination point in fully autonomous machines.

Compliance with regulations for noise emission is the bare minimum requirement for heavy equipment manufacturers. Furthermore, operators’ safety and comfort are attributes that require attention to stay competitive. As design complexity increases, manufacturers cannot rely on existing knowledge alone to address new challenges like electrification. To avoid late NVH issues in the prototyping phase, it’s important to adopt a more systematic approach to design right first time. This presentation will show how testing methods are used for validation and troubleshooting. More importantly, we will discuss innovative testing techniques that can be used to solve problems early in the development process.

This presentation addresses our current aspirations in providing improved energy management of the vehicle cabin. We will present few ideas to improve comfort and explain our current developments in this field. Emphasis being on Low Emissivity coatings and reflective foils within the laminated glass. We will be addressing also mechanism to manage light transmission (electrochromic) on laminated glasses. Illumination within the cabin, with glass mounted LED’s, and opportunities this technology may offer in coming years. Presentations aim is to provide ideas and get feedbsck from interested parties of their individual requirements.

The development of autonomous and electrified vehicles for transportation, mining, agriculture, forestry and construction requires a deep look into job-site safety and appropriate lighting to prevent accidents and injuries. Warning light reliability and projection are mission-critical to job-site safety. Furthermore, providing added operator awareness via advanced safety lighting is mission-critical to keeping workers, equipment and the job site secure. This presentation will highlight existing LED safety and warning systems and provide conceptual direction for the future of autonomous vehicle safety lighting.

More and more off-highway customers are accustomed to integrated mobile (smartphone/tablet) experiences in their cars (audio, navigation, etc) and their homes (IoT applications, remote monitoring, etc). These integrated mobile experiences are creating new expectations for mobile integrations and experiences for off-highway equipment. This presentation will provide examples of integrations of these mobile devices in off-highway applications and provide technical/engineering detail about how the security and safety of these devices are managed when used in control systems.

Software and electronics are where today’s innovation happens, and happens at speed. As a result, the human-machine interface is how the system communicates this revolution with the user. The presentation will address some of the key trends in vehicle HMI development, where technologies encompassing infotainment, graphics and augmented reality, previously only available in the high-end mobile and automotive domains, have now reached, and begun to flourish, in the industrial space. These trends challenge how systems are developed, from tightly defined and isolated embedded systems to integrated platforms with a plethora of modules.

Ergonomic aspects and the object-user relationship must be considered when designing a value-adding HMI. For years, Danfoss Power Solutions has collaborated with the Biomechanical Institute of Valencia in Spain to develop the newest range of remote controls. This collaboration is focused on combining biomechanics, ergonomic and emotional engineering knowledge and applying them to improve the operator experience. The users are paramount in the design process; it is necessary to know about their day-to-day experiences and incorporate their suggestions. The design process is based on a three-phase methodology, leading to more ergonomic, comfortable and intuitive products.

The presentation will discuss the current trends in user experience design in off-highway cabins and automotive products in the area of connected machines, IoT, autonomous driving and digital mirrors. What impact do these trends have on overall system architecture and embedded software design? What role can open-source platforms, embedded Linux and Qt play in these environments and help you to create stunning products? The presentation will provide an overview of a reference architecture for off-highway products to implement a sophisticated, well-designed user experience, and will outline best practices and lessons learned from automotive projects.

Head-up display shows critical information in front of the driver/operator and allows them to focus on the road and operation. There are different display technologies for head-up displays, such as projected HUD, TOLED, miniLED and electroluminescent displays. Each technology has its advantages and disadvantages. This presentation will compare four head-up display solutions in the following areas: construction, display installation and integration, lamination readiness, focal point, transmission, operating temperature, resistance to shock and vibration, resistance to humidity and solar load, optical uniformity, maturity, color, product lifetime and production life.

Industrial vehicle manufacturers can have very particular requirements for their display systems. In this study, we demonstrate how an application for machine diagnostics was created in partnership with Komatsu, displaying all required, relevant parameters. We will also demonstrate how WE cabin technology can develop customized solutions for all use cases. Using best practices, we will demonstrate how HMIs can be integrated into the electrical architecture and what opportunities this creates.

The presentation will discuss lean manufacturing production in the off-highway and utility environments, and what it means for complete structures and system modules for high-tech cabs. In particular, it will describe how Fritzmeier came up with solutions for lightweight cab design in the context of production operations. It will also discuss gluing and welding robots and how to implement such a process.

In the automotive industry, design has always been of the greatest importance. The lights on a car are one of the most important design elements and brand signals. Today, this is becoming as important for heavy vehicles. When designing new lights for vehicles, there is much more to consider besides the look and feel of the lighting unit. High-quality vehicles need high-quality lights, with a long lifetime. They also need efficient light output in an optimal and flexible lighting solution to help create a good working environment for the operator and those working around a machine. In addition, environmental issues and sustainability are becoming increasingly important. This presentation will discuss design as a strategic tool, different levels of special lighting design, TYRI inventions available for your product, how to increase aftermarket sales, design case studies – Toyota and Massey Ferguson, and how much all this will cost.

The presentation will discuss the challenges for heavy machinery design, and explain how to imagine, create and experience the heavy machinery cabin of tomorrow with a unified creative design workflow solution. Create the right cabin experience with an innovative 3D solution designed around the virtual operator. Explore and express design ideas with 3D sketching and concept modeling in VR. Benefit from realistic materials, environments and high-resolution humans. Set and review design variants to take accurate decisions. Design and collaborate in immersive VR to extend the design experience.

This presentation will show how a driving simulator can leverage a virtual prototype to create an interconnected driving experience. One where multiple attributes like NVH, vehicle dynamics, HMI, ADAS and other functions can come together to provide a realistic evaluation for sign-off and validate target achievement. Given the push for a more refined customer experience in off-highway vehicles, this discussion is more critical now than ever. Being able to evaluate multiple factors in full context is not only smart but cost-effective and fast. Driving simulators are no longer a nice-to-have, but an engineering necessity.

Designing cabs and controls for mobile equipment has traditionally relied on evaluating designs through 3D CAD, physical mockups and prototypes. Evaluating controls in particular required either an operational vehicle prototype or at least prototype controls installed on an existing production vehicle. We have explored, created and implemented various tools that have allowed us to leverage virtual reality hardware and the Unity software platform to create driveable virtual simulators based on 3D CAD of the cab and rapidly prototyped physical controls. These simulators are now part of our development process and are implemented very early in the product development phase.