At the Channar iron ore mine in the Pilbara, Rio Tinto continues to collaborate with partners, Scania and Wenco, to create an interoperable haulage solution for its autonomous haul trucks. The current project remains centred on what Rio Tinto calls a ‘Right Sized Autonomous Haulage System,’ part of its focus on new thinking on truck sizes in mining.
The work to date has been on Scania 8×4 XT 40 t class tipper trucks and a major part of the work has been looking at the issue of the sweet spot in truck size and class. Rio Tinto has stated: “Larger haul trucks, while already automated, consume more energy than current electric-vehicle power sources can generate. By exploring truck size, we want to assess how big and small trucks can both be a part of the solution to reduce our emissions in the Pilbara and find fit-for-purpose solutions in mining.”
Ben Rogers, General Manager Services & Delivery Technology at Rio Tinto recently added in an online post on the project drivers: “Because we’ll have the flexibility to take the best autonomous haul truck offerings from our vendor partners to deliver the best outcomes in our operations. This includes accelerating the use of smaller, civil class electric trucks which will help to reduce our mining and operational footprints. This means narrower roads, a smaller mining pit and smaller mobile equipment maintenance infrastructure, creating less waste through the mining process and minimising our impact on the landscape and environment.”
He continued that it has successfully tested spot loading integration using Scania’s autonomous trucks with Wenco’s Open Autonomy system installed on a wheel loader and says it will continue to trial the joint solution over the next 12 months. Using Wenco’s software, the driver defines a loading bay, where the autonomous truck is sent to be loaded. Once the autonomous truck is full, it leaves the loading bay and carries on to the dumping point.
Wenco and parent company Hitachi are championing open standards including the implementation of ISO 23725 — the standard that decouples autonomous fleet control from OEM systems and enables customers to use existing haul trucks, FMS, machine guidance, hardware, network and other infrastructure already in place. The open systems platform provides the necessary FMS, spotting, mapping, traffic management, situational awareness, and controls to enable both traditional ultra class trucks and new entrants offering smaller or electrified trucks. Wenco is partnering with Oxbotica and other autonomy vendors to create Global Mining Group defined Level 5 autonomy for any ISO 23725 and open Drive-by-Wire standard supporting OEM vendor.
