US Patent Issued to Caterpillar on Sept. 15 for "Estimating and visualizing terrain parameters for excavation" (Illinois Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 15 -- United States Patent no. 12,735,872, issued on Sept. 15, was assigned to Caterpillar Inc. (Peoria, Ill.).

"Estimating and visualizing terrain parameters for excavation" was invented by Benjamin J. Hodel (Dunlap, Ill.), Adam Martin Nackers (Washington, Ill.), Justin Lee Steinlage (Mackinaw, Ill.), Mo Wei (Dunlap, Ill.) and Benjamin Floyd (Peoria, Ill.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Autonomous systems enable a machine, such as an excavator, to dig in a specified area with little to no human intervention. However, conventional autonomous systems require costly exteroceptive systems to monitor the terrain surface during the autonomous dig operation. Accordingly, embod...