The device created by University of Arizona senior engineering students is suspended from a mobile armature can be positioned over an excavation made by a backhoe or other excavator and accurately measure the depth and volume using laser range finders (lidar?). This keeps the operator away from the excavation and allows for a more accurate measurement compared to using a tape or rod. The team of senior engineering students wrote their own software from scratch. The Caterpillar Proving Grounds in nearby Green Valley, AZ will be using the technology immediately and working on a more advanced version soon. [Source: Arizona Daily Star. Image: CAT]
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Devil’s Slide Tunnel, Project Updates and Geotechnical Info
Devil’s Slide is an infamous landslide along California’s Highway 1 or Pacific Coast Highway near Pacifica, just south of the San Francisco Bay area. Caltrans’ Devil’s Slide Tunnel project is an effort to bypass that slide and make the heavily traveled roadway safe for drivers and to eliminate the maintenance and traffic hassles caused by slope failures blocking the road. We first covered the project back in September of 2007 when the tunnel portion of the project commenced. In that post, you can find a Google Earth KML File showing the location of the tunnels and the new bridges associated with the project. In this post, I’ll provide you with some updated progress information as well as some background on the geotechnical and other aspects of the project. More links and videos are at the end of the post. (Photo by Kim Komenich, San Francisco Chronicle). […]