Rio Tinto’s autonomous haul trucks hit one-billion-tonne milestone
12 February 2018
Rio Tinto’s fleet of autonomous haul trucks recently hit a significant milestone at the company’s operations in Australia by moving their one-billionth tonne of material. Since commencing trial operations in 2008, haul trucks fitted with Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) technology have now moved more than one billion tonnes of both ore and waste material across five sites in the Pilbara including the newly commissioned Silvergrass mine.
The autonomous haul trucks are operated by a supervisory system and a central controller, rather than a driver. They use pre-defined GPS courses to automatically navigate haul roads and intersections and to know actual locations, speeds and directions of other vehicles at all times. Last year, Rio Tinto’s autonomous fleet accounted for about a quarter of the total material moved across the Pilbara mines.
On average, each autonomous truck was estimated to have operated about 700 hours more than conventional haul trucks during 2017 and around 15% lower load and haul unit costs. There have been zero injuries attributed to autonomous haul trucks since deployment, highlighting their safety advantages, the company said.
With more than 80 autonomous Komatsu trucks currently operating and plans in place to increase this to more than 140 by the end of 2019, the pace of automation across Rio Tinto’s iron ore business is accelerating.
Hauling one billion tonnes autonomously is an impressive milestone for our business and again highlights Rio Tinto’s pioneering spirit when it comes to adopting revolutionary new technologies which are making the industry safer and more efficient. We are studying future additions to our autonomous truck fleet that we expect will contribute to our $5 billion productivity program, specifically Iron Ore’s commitment to deliver $500 million of additional free cash flow from 2021 onwards.
—Rio Tinto Iron Ore chief executive Chris Salisbury
Last month, Rio Tinto approved retrofit programs to add autonomous technology to 48 existing Komatsu and Caterpillar haul trucks over the next two years. About 20% of Rio Tinto’s existing fleet of almost 400 haul trucks in the Pilbara is autonomous. Following the completion of the retrofit projects autonomous trucks will represent about 30% of the fleet.
Rio Tinto has been partnering with Komatsu for 20 years and in September deployed the world’s first retrofitted Komatsu autonomous haul truck at the Hope Downs 4 operation.
More efficiency and more safety without a driver certainly mean great savings and lower cost to transport ore from one place to another.
Crude oil transformed into solid balls, could safely be transported for long distances in similar automated trucks and/or trains, eliminating pollution from leaking pipelines, oil rail tankers and existing oil trucks.
Posted by: HarveyD | 12 February 2018 at 06:04 PM