Utility lines, such as lines for telephones, electricity distribution, natural gas, cable television, fiber optics, Internet, traffic lights, street lights, storm drains, water mains, and wastewater pipes, are often located underground. Said utility lines described above are referred to as “buried assets” herein. Consequently, before excavation occurs in an area, especially an urban area, an excavator is typically required to clear excavation activities with the proper authorities and service providers. The clearance procedure usually requires that the excavator contact a central authority (such as “One Call”, “811” and “Call Before You Dig,” which are well known in the art) which, in turn, sends a notification to the appropriate utility companies. Subsequently, each utility company must perform a buried asset detection procedure, which includes having a field technician visit the proposed excavation site, detecting the relevant buried assets and physically marking the position of the buried asset using temporary paint or flags.
Usually, a field technician visiting a proposed excavation site utilizes a portable electronic device known as a pipe or cable locator, an electromagnetic locate device (“ELD”), an electromagnetic locator, a buried asset locate device, or a buried asset locator (collectively referred to herein as an “ELD”). Said ELDs are commercial, off-the-shelf, devices employed to detect and identify the position of buried assets. ELDs are usually used in conjunction with a transmitter, so as to create a field that can be detected by the ELD. This is typically achieved by connecting the transmitter to a suitable connection point (i.e., pedestal, hydrant, manhole, removable cover, lid, junction box or other access point) of the buried asset, wherein the transmitter sends a signal of a specific frequency onto the buried asset. Subsequently, the ELD is “tuned” to the specific frequency in order to locate the resulting electromagnetic signal radiating from the buried asset, thus enabling the position and route of the buried asset to be marked with paint or flags above surface. Best practice standards require the operator perform very specific and consistent physical motions with the ELD such as sweeping, rotating and lifting, all while the ELD must be orientated correctly to the plane of the buried asset to ensure correct geometric alignment with the radiated electromagnetic field. The process of detecting and marking out a buried asset using an ELD is referred to herein as a buried asset locate procedure, buried asset location procedure, or a buried asset detection procedure.
The aforementioned buried asset location procedure, however, takes time and training to master. There are a variety of techniques that the field technician must learn in order to perform buried asset location procedures in a way that meets best practice standards. Often, the field technician may spend a significant amount of time at a training facility learning proper techniques and then perform an apprenticeship afterwards. After completing the aforementioned training and apprenticeship, field technicians then commence work performing buried asset location procedure.
The training for process for buried asset location procedures, however, can be long and tedious for field technicians. Typically, field technicians in training must be taken, in person, to real-life buried asset situations so that the technician may perform the learned procedures on actual buried power lines, data lines, etc. Said training scenarios, however, can be costly and time consuming to build, as they require that actual utility lines and cables are buried at various depths. This problem is compounded by the fact that real life training scenarios such as these are static and cannot be changed. As a result, technicians in training tend to learn the position of said buried assets after testing on said training scenarios more than once. Consequently, the real life training scenarios described above are of limited utility.
Additionally, though prior art approaches to address said problems with the prior art do exit, they are fraught with drawbacks. One of said approaches describes a simulator that includes a fully simulated buried asset and a fully simulated ELD. This approach, however, has several disadvantages. First, this approach can be costly and time consuming to develop, as it requires that an entire ELD is developed from scratch. This requires a full and detailed understanding of the inner components of a conventional ELD, as well as the ability to emulate the ELD. Second, this approach is disadvantageous because it requires that a fully simulated conventional ELD exhibits real time responses to a fully simulated electromagnetic field. This can be difficult to accomplish, as electromagnetic fields are complex to model. Third, the use of a fully simulated ELD is disadvantageous because it requires that the trainee learn to use the simulated ELD. The majority of the field technician corps are well versed in the use of conventional ELDs. It is wasteful to have field technicians learn to use a new ELD solely for the purposes of training. Lastly, the use of a fully simulated ELD is disadvantageous because it requires that the trainee learn to use a simulated ELD that is different from the use of conventional ELDs on the market and in the field. Again, it is wasteful to have field technicians learn to use a new ELD, which does not correspond to the method of use of conventional ELDs.
Therefore, a need exists for improvements over the prior art, and more particularly for more efficient methods and systems for training field technicians in proper buried asset locate procedures.