On behalf of Topcon's Livermore Engineering group I was tasked with leadership of a study to prove the feasibility of an autonomous construction application for small equipment such as skid steers or compact track loaders.  Our theory was that small equipment is used for small tasks where barrier to acceptance would be less than for large equipment because user investment is lower, tasks can be isolated, and risk to productivity has less severity.

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Topcon has world class expertise in machine control so my approach was to identify universal requirements for autonomous construction applications and then decompose a few typical tasks into their constituent competencies which could be mapped to sensor and algorithmic solutions.

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This work earned Livermore Engineering a place in the corporate development strategy and lead to proposals for implement pose and surface mapping projects in addition to demonstrating several fundamental competencies required for an autonomous CTL application. 

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Resources available to me for this work included internal and external software resources, access Topcon marketing resources and partners, and university engineering programs.