By Gavin Jenkins, Senior Managing Editor
MUNICH — At most construction equipment trade shows, manufacturers feature simulators in their booths.
It seems impossible to attend a show and miss them. They always have a line of people waiting to sit in the chair and simulate operating heavy machine equipment.
Bauma attendees who visit the BOMAG booth in the outdoor lot of the Neue Messe München exhibition center might think they are approaching another simulator. But this is no simulation.
BOMAG, which is owned by the Fayat Group, is allowing attendees to drive a single drum roller. However, the roller isn’t in Munich at Bauma. It’s 280 miles away at BOMAG’s headquarters in Boppard, Germany.
Attendees sit in an operator’s seat, with three screens in front of them. One shows the course in Boppard in a wide view. Another shows an aerial view and a figure-eight obstacle course. The final screen has the rear video and front video of the ROBOMAG.
Full disclosure: your humble reporter sat in the chair and operated the roller. It was wild to operate a piece of heavy machinery from that far away, while looking at a few screens. It should also be noted that BOMAG’s roller features a horn, which I honked early and often, much to the dismay, one imagines, of the person monitoring the obstacle course in Boppard.
“What we are showcasing here today is the first significant shift into a practical use of automation,” said Julian Bertram, product manager assistance systems and automation at BOMAG.
This is a partially autonomous machine that is able to perform any given task by itself. However, as Bertram points out, there are still times where the machine doesn’t know how to react.
“The machine operator is now longer an operator,” Bertram said. “We see them as a machine manager. And he’s managing a fleet of partially autonomous machines, no matter the distance or where the machine is located.”
BOMAG first unveiled its ROBOMAG in 2019. And though the single drum roller featured at Bauma is a proof of concept and not on the market, it’s a sign of what the future holds for the industry, according to Bertram.
“It’s a first step,” he said. “We can see a labor shortage. We can see costs. We can see pressure from everywhere. And we think this is an answer to both of these two big, tremendous changes in the industry.”
Other manufacturers are displaying partially autonomous, non-line of sight technology at Bauma. Caterpillar, for example, has an operator doing his job at Germany's Lukas Gläser quarry from the showroom floor.
Inside, on the opposite end of the Neue Messe München exhibition center, Bauma attendees witnessed another aspect of automation in the Innovation Hall.
