Jarod TangRobotics Engineer, MEng
Unreal Engine 5 render of the simulated mine site with haul roads, a processing plant and autonomous trucks.

Autonomous Mining Truck Simulator.

  • Capstone 2024
  • Unreal Engine 5
  • ROS2 Humble
  • Human-in-the-loop

A high-fidelity driving simulator in Unreal Engine 5 and ROS2 where human drivers share a virtual mine site with autonomous haul trucks, built to study how people drive around autonomous vehicles.

Reports

Autonomous haul trucks driving on the simulated mine haul road.

Simulation.

A mine site built in Unreal Engine 5 where virtual autonomous trucks navigate with ROS2 and the Nav2 framework alongside a human-driven truck.

Driver wearing a VR headset in a racing seat rig, holding the steering wheel with feet on the pedals.

Hardware.

A Logitech G29 wheel and pedals drive the simulation through ROS2 middleware, with a seat rig for the driver.

Plot of filtered EMG signals recorded during a simulator run.

Sensing.

Surface EMG on three muscle groups and heart rate were captured with custom C++ libraries during a pilot study with eight participants.

  • Top-down render of the simulated mine site layout and haul road loop.
  • Simulated LiDAR point cloud from a truck in the Unreal Engine mine site.
  • Path-finding view showing a planned route along the haul road.
  • Unreal Engine viewport showing the collision boxes around the truck model.
  • Haul truck model prepared in Blender before import into Unreal Engine.
  • Top-down map of the simulated mine site layout.
  • Cross-correlation plot comparing driver and autonomous vehicle inputs.
  • Delsys wireless EMG base station with its sensors docked, beside a single Delsys EMG sensor.
  • Sensor placement figure, with an anatomy diagram marking the sternocleidomastoid, triceps long head and biceps, beside a photo of EMG sensors taped to the neck and upper arm.
  • Data pathway flowchart, from the Delsys Trigno, Polar H9, Unreal Engine and Vive Elite XR, through data extraction and sEMG filtering, to data synchronisation and statistical analysis.