MEET THE BOSS: THE KUSKOFF FAMILY GRADERMATE
GraderMate, launched in July 2021, and is a new automatic hydraulic grade control system developed and manufactured for excavators by the enterprising Kuskoff family company based in Hindmarsh Island, South Australia. The family previously ran NCMotion, a robotics and automation company led by their father, Illya Kuskoff. NCMotion was involved in factory automation, installation, manufacture and repairs of factory CNC machines and sold and set up automated moulding machines for over 20 years. Apart from Illya, the GraderMate family team includes his wife Suzanne and sons Peter and Paul with the family’s Border Collie, Umi, always ready to lend a paw. Peter has been programming since he was in primary school, while Paul has a background in computer science at the University of Adelaide. Suzanne oversees the operational and marketing aspects of the business, including the firm’s website gradermate.com and involves herself in GraderMate testing. 16
THE GENESIS OF GRADERMATE Peter Kuskoff explains, “Before GraderMate, we were in factory automation where we worked primarily with plastics. We had robots pulling wheelie bins out of big injection moulding machines and creating interfaces for the robotics. It was general programming work.” For a change of pace, the Kuskoffs also owned a farm and purchased an excavator to support their agrarian endeavours. Peter recalls, “We soon discovered excavators are pretty hard to use when you’re trying to do accurate surfaces because of the way the boom, arm and bucket move in arcs.” He continued, “We then started observing automation was rare in the construction industry, especially with smaller contracting firms. Thus, we saw an opportunity to use our automation experience to develop a system specifically for excavators.” The result was GraderMate. Designed to fit excavators and control the hydraulics, GraderMate enables
these machines to easily create flat surfaces, slopes, trenches, and profiles with the press of a footswitch. The driver selects a type of surface using a touchscreen tablet, moves the bucket to the desired position, and then presses the footswitch. Peter said, “We tried to make GraderMate simple to use so that any operator can jump onto an excavator and use their existing skills. GraderMate augments all levels of operator expertise.” GraderMate is hands-free and uses a simple tablet interface designed for minimal interaction. It allows operators to maintain awareness of distances and depths on screen during operations, and they can always keep track of their machine and bucket level without leaving the cab.
GYRATING POINT OF DIFFERENCE The jewel in the GraderMate crown is its gyroscopes, which Peter Kuskoff explains can measure the angle of the excavator’s arm and each joint on the arm. “The gyroscopes will monitor the angles a thousand times a second and then output to the hydraulics to move
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