Rodradar Ltd.

Caterpillar Inc.

Caterpillar Sarl

Simon Conway

John Francis Roulston

Sage F Smith

Ronen Globinsky

Shai Segal

Michael Evans

Thomas James Martin

Elie Abi-Karam

Maxim R Ruffels

Neil R Britten-Austin

R Neil Britten-Austin

Richard Strong

An implement for use with an excavator includes a lightweight housing, a first coupling feature, a ground penetrating radar antenna, a controller, a wireless communication circuit and a rotation unit. The lightweight housing has an upper surface, a lower surface and a cavity. The first coupling feature is located on the upper surface and cooperates with a second coupling feature on an excavator arm. The ground penetrating radar antenna is mounted near the lower surface. The controller is mounted within the cavity and provides outgoing signals to the radar antenna, receives incoming signals from the radar antenna and interprets the incoming signals so as to provide implement output information. The wireless communication circuit is mounted within the cavity and transmits the implement output information. The rotation unit is mounted within the cavity and rotates the housing vis-à-vis the excavator arm.

Radar system for detecting profiles of objects, particularly in a vicinity of a machine work tool

An antenna for a ground-penetration radar system is disclosed. The antenna has a housing that defines a cavity. A radiator is located on a surface of a planar substrate within the cavity. A wear-block is located between the radiator and the opening to the cavity for providing mechanical protection to the radiator. An absorber assembly is located on an opposite side of the radiator from the opening. The absorber assembly comprises a microwave absorber and a first dielectric layer. The first dielectric layer is located between the radiator and the microwave absorber.

Dipole antenna for use in radar applications

A radar system is disclosed for detecting profiles of objects, particularly in a vicinity of a machine work tool. The radar system uses a direct digital synthesiser to generate an intermediate frequency off-set frequency. It also uses an up-converter comprising a quadrature mixer, single-side mixer or complex mixer to add the off-set frequency to the transmitted frequency. It further uses a down-converter in the receive path driven by the off-set frequency as a local oscillator. The radar system enables received information to be transferred to the intermediate frequency. This in turn can be sampled synchronously in such a way as to provide a complex data stream carrying amplitude and phase information. The radar system is implementable with a single transmit channel and a single receive channel.

The present disclosure relates to a method of operating a machine comprising an implement and a machine for performing such a method. The implement is configured for motion in at least three degrees of freedom. In response to an input, movement of the implement from first to second positions is constrained to a first motion in a first plane or a second motion in a second plane. Sensor data received from an IMU attached to the implement is indicative of the movement of the implement. A first or second estimation mode is selected based upon a determination that the movement is the first or second motion. The first or second estimation mode is implemented to estimate the trajectory of the implement and the second position based upon the sensor data.

Method of operating a machine comprising an implement

Growing community of inventors

Warwickshire, United Kingdom

Simon Conway