Excavator data acquisition and control system and process

A data acquisition system for acquiring geological information at a site, comprising:

• a ground penetrating radar unit to transmit a source electromagnetic signal into a subsurface at the site and to receive a reflected electromagnetic signal from the subsurface;
• a memory to store excavation difficulty data associated with known types of geology and to store reflected signal data corresponding to the reflected electromagnetic signal;
• and
• a processor coupled to the memory and the ground penetrating radar unit that associates the reflected signal data with the excavation difficulty data to produce estimated excavation difficulty data for the subsurface at the site.

A method of characterizing a subsurface, including the steps of:

• acquiring geological imaging data for the subsurface;
• providing geologic filter data associated with known types of subsurface geology;
• and
• removing content of the geological imaging data corresponding to the known types of subsurface geology using the geologic filter data to produce filtered geologic imaging data representative of a characteristic of the subsurface other than a characteristic associated with the known types of subsurface geology.

A method of characterizing a subsurface, including the steps of:

• acquiring geologic imaging data for the subsurface;
• providing excavation difficulty data associated with known types of geology;
• and
• associating the geologic imaging data for the subsurface with the excavation difficulty data to produce estimated excavation difficulty data for the subsurface.