Driverless trucks the shape of things to come?

The open-cast mining sector of the future is likely to be an eerie place, combining driverless trucks, drills and haulage trains with plant controllers monitoring operations from central control stations possibly thousands of kilometres away in a major city. For the past five years, the open-cast mining industry in the Pilbara region of Australia has been busy developing, testing and proving driverless, computer and GPS-controlled autonomous vehicles. This development of autonomous haulage systems (AHS) is seen by mining companies around the world as the logical next step in the evolution from fleet management systems to true fleet automation solutions. Its purpose is to co-ordinate and autonomously drive a fleet of off-highway haul trucks operating in an open-pit mine. AHS trucks will load and dump ore and navigate a network of haul roads completely without human intervention – all while operating safely in the vicinity of mining vehicles, personnel, and equipment. AHS initiatives, including pilot projects or production deployments, have also proliferated worldwide within the past five years. Rio Tinto, a pioneer when it comes to AHS, started trials with truck makers Komatsu in 2008 and has reported a 10% improvement in timeefficiency since then. In SA, although in the early test phases of the concept, these AHS dump trucks also hold promise for our mining giants. According to David Outhwaite, principal adviser on media relations at Rio Tinto in London, the company began work on its Mine of the Future programme in 2008, soon followed by trials of the autonomous trucks starting in 2009. “Our focus is the Pilbara iron ore operation in Western Australia, where we are moving very high volumes of ore and waste material around the mine sites,” he told FTW. Questioned about the development of similar AHS programmes on the sub- Saharan scene, he stressed that, for the moment, “the focus was the Pilbara for autonomous trucks”, and that there were no plans as yet for the company’s mines in southern Africa. And Anglo American is also involved in looking at AHS for the future. Without giving any details, Moeketsi Mofokeng, communication manager at the Anglo American thermal coal unit, said: “We are still in the early stages of this investigation.” However, FTW was able to glean more about the company’s move into automated mining processes from a release from Anglo American’s US-based group director for technical and sustainability, Tony O’Neill. Facing challenges such as lower commodity prices, declining grades of ore deposits and difficulty of access to ore bodies, O’Neill said the mining industry “needs to leap forward 20 years in five”. To help drive this, he added, Anglo was working with Autonomous Solutions Incorporated (ASI) automation engineers to create fully autonomous, teleoperated and remote-control haulage operations. “The goal of the multiyear relationship is to deliver enhanced productivity, sustainability and safety through mining vehicle automation systems for the company’s haulage operations,” O’Neill said. And ASI revealed that, outside of Australia, it had installed its retrofit package on two mining units in SA. So with these mesmerising autonomous haul trucks promising to make mining processes more efficient, reduce overall extraction costs and improve mine safety, they point the way to a ‘smart’ future for the industry. And who knows? In the next two or three decades we may see the completely autonomous mine. INSERT Anglo is working with Autonomous Solutions Incorporated automation engineers to create fully autonomous, teleoperated and remotecontrol haulage operations. CAPTION Rio Tinto started trials with truck makers Komatsu in 2008 and has reported a 10% improvement in time-efficiency since then.