Remote monitoring service showcased by Remion at the Future Mobile Work Machine event

Normet, a mining and tunnelling technology company, has deployed Remion’s remote monitoring service worldwide through its control centre. Jukka Kivimäki, CEO of Remion, and Eric Stigzelius, Senior Manager of Normet in the picture.

Progress towards autonomous mobile machinery

The keynotes at the Future Mobile Work Machine event provided interesting insights and views on the direction in which mobile work machine technology is evolving and how digitalization, electrification, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and sustainability requirements will change business, production, and working environments in the coming years.

The key theme of the keynotes was machine autonomy. Miika Okko, CTO of Remion, highlighted a keynote by Agco, which summarised the themes of other speakers from different equipment manufacturers.

– Pekka Ingalsuo from Agco presented the six areas required for machine automation: route planning, vehicle control, obstacle avoidance, local navigation, process automation, and health management.

The event was also attended by machine control system companies that develop, for example, driver assistance systems.

– Mobile machinery is partly moving towards autonomy through assistive functions,” says Kivimäki.

According to Miika Oko, CTO, and Jukka Kivimäki, CEO of Remion, the Future Mobile Work event highlighted the autonomy of both mobile machinery and production environments.

A vision for an autonomous production environment

Konecranes CTO Franz Schulte’s vision of an Industrial Metaverse, a future production environment that enables dynamic cooperation between people and machines, was presented in his speech and attracted the interest of Remion’s experts.

In the Industrial metaverse, not only the autonomous equipment but also the production plant itself will be autonomous, using a variety of technologies such as smart and AR solutions.

– The remote monitoring service we presented at the event could be one of the tools of the industrial metaverse, which tells the condition of the equipment and helps maintenance staff and operators to keep the equipment running efficiently, Kivimäki says.

– Remion has the interest and also the capability and overall understanding to build tools for future production environments to facilitate customers’ operations and make their processes more efficient, Kivimäki continues.

– We have analytics and data modeling expertise for the development of the autonomous production space of the future, which can be used for example in environmental modeling, Okko adds.

The hype of electrification and artificial intelligence over, security and sustainability more in the spotlight

According to Remion, the Future Mobile Work Machine event last year was still more about the electrification of machines.

– Now, safety and sustainability were the main focus. Electrification is no longer new, it is already happening. It seems that companies are turning their thoughts to the safety of equipment and sustainable, responsible operations,” says Kivimäki.

In her speech, Volvo’s Executive Vice President Carolina Diez Ferrer said Volvo is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050.

– Volvo aims to have carbon-neutral equipment on the market by 2040 so that it is on the road 10 years ahead of the carbon-neutral target,” said Okko, CTO of Remion.

– Hybrid solutions were still on the agenda in other presentations. Agco’s Pekka Ingalsuo said it is not possible to displace the fuel engine at this stage, Okko continued.

According to Okko, the event also showed the stagnation of the early days of AI.

– When it comes to AI, we are back to realism: AI is part of the solutions of the future, but it will not solve everything,” Okko says.