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AUTONOMOUS MINING vative streak with the use of surface miners in its iron-ore operations, so the investment in autonomous haulage appears logical. The most recent entrant to this challenging market, Hitachi, began work in April at the Meandu coal mine in Queensland. Here, the company is carrying out a three-truck trial, albeit independently from the mine owner, Stanwell Corp., over the next three years to prove its version of the technology in an operating environment. Developments Over Time One of the key areas from which autonomous truck haulage has grown has been the concept of automated dispatching. From its early days in the 1980s, companies such as Modular Mining Systems and Wenco International have continuously developed their systems, with a plethora of installations worldwide assisting surface mines to optimize their haulage fleet movements. Recognizing the value of these systems to autonomous haulage, Komatsu was quick off the mark with its acquisition of a holding in Modular in 1996, increasing this to full ownership in 2003. In a press release issued to coincide with Komatsu's ground-breaking agreement with Rio Tinto in 2011, Modular explained that its contribution to the Komatsu autonomous haulage system includes the supervisory system, operational intelligence, communications infrastructure, operational reporting and vehicleinteraction safety technologies. "Autonomous haulage is the logical and important next step toward increasing productivity and safety, reducing maintenance costs and environmental impacts, and creating high-tech jobs in the mining industry," the company added. Hitachi's subsequent acquisition of a holding in Wenco in mid-2009 merely confirmed what industry watchers had already ascertained: that sophisticated fleet management systems are an essential foundation for the development of autonomous haulage systems (AHS). Hitachi confirmed as much in its announcement last April of the Meandu trial. "The objective is to deliver optimized AHS solutions to customers," the company said, "based on the proven Hitachi AC-drive dump truck system in collaboration with the latest products from Wenco International Mining Systems Ltd." As Meech noted, some fundamental questions that any reliable autonomous haulage system has to answer include localization, navigation, obstacle avoidwww.e-mj.com Komatsu's 930E-4AT autonomous haul truck. ance and machine health. To these aspects such as production and maintenance scheduling can be added, so all-in-all, a competent system amounts to much more than merely monitoring machine movements by GPS. Komatsu's Early Days... In an edition of its customer magazine, Views, published in 2010, Komatsu's general manager for autonomous haulage systems, Takao Nagai, explained that the company had been investigating the possibility of this type of system since the 1970s, with the first major trial undertaken at an Australian coal mine in 1995. "At that time, our system was only able to manage no more than four driverless dump trucks," he said. To increase the number of units in control, we needed to develop a fleet management system, but we had almost no experience of developing such software at Komatsu." The solution came with Komatsu's tieup with Modular Mining Systems (MMS) in 1996, with Nagai noting that "since then, MMS has played an increasingly important role in the commercialization of AHS." "In 2002, we got the official 'go' in the company for our development plan for AHS, and kicked off its development for use in large mines," Nagai said. "After developing and testing the system for about three years, in December 2005 we began testing a fleet of five 930E-AT driverless dump trucks at Codelco's Radomiro Tomic mine. "In January 2008, we formally delivered 11 driverless dump trucks to Codelco's Gaby copper mine, marking the world's first commercialization of AHS. Under stable operation, 11 units transported 48.5 million metric tons (mt) of material, including 24.5 million mt of ore, and contributed to the production of 148,000 mt of copper for the 2008/09 fiscal year." A further truck was added to the fleet the following year, since then, the number of trucks has risen to 17. Looking at some of the challenges involved in making autonomous truck haulage as efficient as possible, Nagai said, "One of the demanding tasks of future development concerns how closely we can get our AHS up to human levels of intelligence and skills. Veteran drivers can get the best possible performance out of dump trucks with their superior driving skills, whereas we need to make a number of limitations on driverless dump trucks, such as speed, mainly to ensure sufficient safety. While driverless dump trucks offer significant advantages over man-driven trucks, such as the precision of machinery, we are taking up the challenge of developing a system that can compete with human levels of intelligence and skills and making the fullest use of existing advantages." In the 2010 Views report, Peter Carter, Modular's then president and CEO, added "We are now moving toward the most challenging aspect of our work, that is, developing software that is intelligent enough to enable our driverless trucks to understand JANUARY 2014 • E&MJ; 33