In the last instalment of FatigueM8 Friday’s we looked at the impact of a subtle change to the FatigueM8 units positioning. The image below on the left as you’re looking at it show’s the images being captured by the Front, Sky Facing Camera as a result of the slight changes in unit angle. The Picture on the right shows the actual camera angel.
Front “Sky” facing camera
Before Camera Angel
Problem solved, after a quick trip back to the drawing board, our design team made what looks like a simple tweak to straighten up the camera angel. The resulting image being captured is back to perfecto (as can be seen below).
After Front Facing Camera
After Angel
While the differences between the Before and After camera unit look relatively minor, we’ve actually redesigned the while camera housing. As can be seen in the series of imaged below, the new camera housing allows for the camera angel to be adjusted quite significantly; allowing greater flexibility in our deployment options.
Part of our FatigueM8 solution is a forward facing camera, that captures the road and traffic conditions our drivers are operating in. The camera position has been refined through a few iterations. The current positioning allows for the installation of the FatigueM8 unit on an angle, catering for the shape of dashboards that generally slope down towards the front of the vehicle. The resulting photographs capture the road and traffic quite well.
In early May 2020 we noticed a change in the photo’s that were being captured, there was a lot more sky and a lot less road (as can be seen below). Chatting with our driver, they’d adjusted the angle of the unit to decrease the reflection of the blue light emitted by the LCD screen and resulted in a beautiful selection of “sky shots”.
As discussed in last week’s post, we have removed the LCD screen in the latest iteration to resolve the light emission. Now that we’ve installed the new version we’ve noticed the “sky shots” returning. The cause is again because of the camera angle. In our original design we catered for the “dashboard angle”, however with the new design, the length of the unit is shorter, which allows for the unit to sit essentially flat, pointing the camera skywards.
The change in the camera angle can be seen clear in the images below, using our “view finder jig”.
Our solution is currently will be to create an adjustable camera mount, which will adapt to the different FatigueM8 mounting positions. It’s just a paper sketch at the moment, but within the week it’s be transformed into a 3D print and fitted into the truck for testing.
My Friday afternoon this week concluded with a visit to the Elvin yard in Mitchell; all the trucks had been washed and neatly parked up for the night. My visit was two-fold this, firstly to check on the newly installed FatigueM8 unit, which we’d deployed earlier in the week and also to ‘tweak’ the steering wheel cover installed some 8 weeks earlier.
Job # 1: The new FatigueM8 model has some subtle, yet major changes to the unit. The most notable is the removal of the LCD panel on the front of the unit. During development, the LCD has been an invaluable part of the FatigueM8 compute model; displaying messages, errors and providing feedback, allowing us to see that inside the black box, all is as it should be. Now that the FatigueM8 units are being deployed and used in production, the need for the LCD has reduced. From the outset our mantra has always been “we want the driver to just drive and we’ll take care of the rest”, with the transition from Summer into Autumn and the end of daylight savings meant they were driving more often in dark conditions. While chatting to one of our drivers he mentioned that the blue glow emitted by the LCD in the dark cabin conditions more noticeable. Wanting to ensure we minimise distraction and light pollution in-cab for our drivers, we tweaked the design, reprinted the unit (they are 3D printed locally in Canberra) and installed it.
Job # 2: Since installing our first persistent FatigueM8 unit into the Kenworth T359A some eight (8) weeks ago, we’ve been checking in with the regular with the driver, to get feedback on the unit’s performance. Overall the use of the unit has been seamless, with the only issue being the stitching on one section of the cover had loosened (as can be seen in the picture on the top left below).
After an hour of careful stitching, we fixed the troublesome section and made sure the rest of the wheel won’t have the same issue. When I shared the photo on the bottom-right with the driver he commented “It looks like a racing car steering wheel!” which I think is a good thing 🙂
In July 2019, we participated in the “Coffee with a Cop” at BP Marulan NSW, just up the Hume Hwy. We took the chance to catch up with Multiquip Aggregates, or foundation trial partner and showed them through our latest updates. After a quick run through we hit the road, testing out our latest prototypes in two (2) SCANIA A-Doubles. The ATA were on hand to capture our progress. Check it out here
Its been 7 months since the hackathon and while we were reflecting on our journey so far. We went through and collected up our some of the news articles about us.
Below is some of the news articles which have been about us.
