Patent attributes
An autonomous method for detecting when an earthmoving machine has moved a pile of dirt into contact with another pile of dirt may include receiving at a controller a plurality of signals indicative of one or more parameters including a ground speed of the machine, a target ground speed of the machine, a load on a work implement of the machine, an output speed of a torque converter of the machine, a machine pitch, a machine steering command, a machine heading, and a heading of a slot the machine is in. The controller may standardize and normalize each signal from the plurality of signals in order to create values for each of the one or more parameters that all fall within a common range, wherein the common range is representative of a range from minimum to maximum values for each of the one or more parameters. The controller may also determine a variation of each of the values for the one or more parameters over each of a plurality of time periods to calculate relative rates of change for the one or more parameters, weight each of the values for each of the one or more parameters as a function of the relative rates of change, add up the weighted values of the parameters, and apply a sigmoid function to the weighted values of the parameters in order to limit the effect any one of the parameters has on an output indicative of behavior characteristic of the machine having pushed a pile of dirt into contact with another pile of dirt.
