摘要 |
Control of a piece of excavation equipment (10) to temporarily disable it from further excavating in an area where a buried cable and/or pipe (50) is present is accomplished by providing a detector (54) for sensing if the buried cable and/or pipe is sufficiently close to be potentially damaged. The detector provides a signal indicative of the presence of the buried cable for transmission, via a transmitter-receiver pair (56, 60), to a control valve (62). When a buried cable and/or pipe is detected, the control valve is actuated to divert hydraulic oil that would otherwise flow to a cylinder (44) that provides forward movement of a bucket (38) on the excavating equipment, thereby preventing further excavation by the bucket in the region of the buried cable and/or pipe.
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