Design and Development of a Wireless Multipoint E-stop System for Autonomous Haulers

Abstract: Safety-related functions are important in autonomous industrial applications and are featured in an extensive body of work contained within the standards. The implementation of safety-related systems is commonly done by an external company at a great cost and with limited flexibility. Thus, the objective of this thesis was to develop and implement a safety-related system using o-the-shelf products and to analyse how well it can comply with the established standards of safety-related functions. This work has sought to review the current standards for safety-functions, the eectsof harsh radio environments on safety-related systems, and how to validate the safety-function.The system development process was used to gain knowledge by rst building the concept based on pre-study. After the pre-study was nished, the process moved to the development of software, designed to maintain a wireless heartbeat as well as to prevent collisions between the autonomous and manual-driven vehicles at a quarry, and implementation of the system in real hardware. Finally, a set of software (simulations) and hardware (measurements in an open-pit mine) tests were performed to test the functionality of the system. The wireless tests showed that the system adhered to the functional requirements set by the company, however, the evaluated performance level according to ISO 13849-1 resulted in performance level B which is insucient for a safety-related function. This work demonstrates that it is not possible to develop a safety-related system using the off-the-shelf products chosen, without hardware redundancy.