One removable operator, and everything that goes with it.
Steady Eddie is a removable robot operator. It sits in the seat of a machine you already own, belted in by the machine's own lap belt, and works that machine's own controls. Lift it out and the machine is standard again. Everything else we make goes with that one unit.
One operator. Three systems.
What differs is what moves the controls.
STE Integrate.
Electric where it turns, pneumatic where it pushes, so one unit is at home on an excavator's joysticks and a dozer's levers alike. The system we build today, on fourteen machines of our own at our own Test Facility in Alberta, and the one we recommend first.
Electric throughoutSTE Precision.
All-electric: quiet, exact, and no air on board. For light, fine controls, work indoors and near people, and sites that want no compressed air. The first line, and the one the others grew from.
Air throughoutSTE Air.
All-pneumatic: force, simplicity, and its own air, carried on the unit. For heavy levers and pedals, cold, dust and wet, and crews that already live with air. Its own line, beside the electric one.
Same dock, same seat, and the same red release on every actuator. The three systems side by side.
What ships with every unit.
- The dock.
Fitted once, mechanically: the machine's own seat-belt anchors and the pins on its controls. It stays with the machine, the unit lifts out, and the machine is standard again.
- The control units, on the machine's own controls.
They pin onto the joysticks, levers, pedals and switches the manufacturer put in the cab. Every actuator has a red manual release: one pull, no tool, and a spring does the releasing.
- The fit to your machine and its family.
You fit it, following our instructions, and Eddie calibrates to that cab every day it works. If a person can work the controls, Eddie can work them. The families, and what's inside.
- The safety spine.
Ships in full on every unit, in every configuration, and cannot be optioned out. Among them: an independent safety controller, a stop with no software in the path, a wired control path that wireless never carries, a safe state that needs no computer, sensing that can only stop the machine, and a record that cannot be quietly changed. The rest, and what each one means on the machine. What each one means on the machine.
It arrives working. You make it yours. You can hire a name.
Every time it starts, a person chooses whose way of working is in the seat. There is no default and no last used.
A kit in a case that rides in your cab and records.
How an owner teaches a unit to run a machine the way they want it run. Your operator drives the way they always have, with nothing of Eddie's connected. What the kit captures stays the owner's.
STE OperatorsLOADED, TAUGHT, or HIRED by name.
The basic set it came with, the way your own operator taught it, or a specialist you hired. Nothing runs because it ran yesterday. A way of working proposes. It never authorizes.
Name HireHire the hand nobody else has, by the hour.
A named operator's way of working, under their name, for your job. You pick that operator before the pass and pay for the hours it runs; the operator is paid for every hour and can end it.
Five tools, for everyone who is not in the seat.
A crew reads a person in the seat without noticing, and with the seat empty that reading is gone. So we took the problem apart into five pieces and engineered each one on its own.
- STE RHR. A handheld a person carries that asks a machine to stand down. It is not an emergency stop. It asks.
- STE Approach Intrusion Sensing. A zone around the machine that the machine watches for itself, wired to the safety side.
- STE SIGNAL. Lights, sound and a swing-direction indicator so a crew can read a machine with nobody in the seat.
- STE CAB. A device in the other machine's cab, so the driver knows what our machine is doing.
- STE SIS. The paperwork that makes a machine a member of the crew, accepted by a person's typed name.
The job is cleared before the machine is.
The job-preparation software every Steady Eddie job runs through: a supervisor defines the work, states the ground, clears the job, proves the plan and keeps the record. Until every gate is closed, nobody can ask for Eddie.
The bay the machine comes to.
STE OILER is site fuel and fluid service: a fixed bay a machine comes to, a receiver in place of its fuel cap, a fill the tank itself is designed to stop, and the volume reported to the STE Site Foreman. It may refuse to dispense for any reason or none, and it may never start an engine or ask a machine to come to it.
A place in the queue, and the money mapped before you buy.
What a seat costs, and what an empty one costs.
One operator seat added up from published figures with the day we read them, the machine standing still, the hours nobody could sit in, and a calculator for your own numbers. The terms come to the list, in order, with the fit and a date.
Pre-orderGet in the queue for a filled seat.
No deposit, no payment, no commitment on either side. Your place is held in the order you joined, and when the system is fully ready and cleared for release we come to you in that order, with the fit, the terms and a date.
Government ProgramsThe programs that can help pay for it.
Governments lend against it, let you write it off faster, pay for the training, and in a few places share the purchase. We map what exists and point you at the right door; no program is open to you until it says so in writing.
Where everything stands.
One unit is built, powered and cycling on the group's own machines at our own Test Facility in Alberta, every axis running its controls through their travel, and the computer that plans the work goes in next. We will show it to you there. The STE Site Foreman is written and running today. STE Precision, STE Air, the operator's skill line, the five site tools and the STE OILER are designed, specified and written down, and that design is what we will put in front of your safety people. No assessment against ISO 13849 or ISO 17757, the standards we design against, has been performed. We would rather you read that here than find it out for yourself later.