Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Ltd. (HCM) selected Orbcomm Global L.P. to monitor, track and control its fleet of general-purpose hydraulic excavators.

The Information Excavator system, developed jointly by HCM and Orbcomm’s Japanese service licensee, Orbcomm Japan, will relay equipment status and performance data to fleet managers via Orbcomm’s low-Earth-orbit satellites. The system is the first of its kind for general-purpose hydraulic excavators and will be commercially available later this summer.

In other Orbcomm news, the company announced that its Ukraine licensee, Orbcomm Ukraine, has launched a pilot program to monitor environmental and operating conditions at the Chernobyl nuclear power station.

The program uses Orbcomm system-enabled equipment to monitor the transport of radioactive materials and the security of remote assets such as automatic gas pumps and water pumping gateways located in the 150-kilometer Chernobyl zone.

One part of the program uses sensor equipment and tracking terminals manufactured by Transexpo Corp., a Ukrainian security systems integrator, to monitor the location and radiation levels of nuclear materials transported to and from Chernobyl Station.

The program is based on the e-Pointer and e-Defender technology developed by Transexpo. E-Pointer is an automatic vehicle location and fleet management system and e-Defender provides remote security and automation services to commercial facilities. Both are designed to use Orbcomm’s satellite network or the terrestrial GSM wireless network to relay data communications.

Orbcomm is owned by Teleglobe Inc. [TGO] and Orbital Sciences Corp. [ORB] and provides two-way monitoring, tracking and measuring services worldwide.