For several years autonomous mining trucks have been operating in Western Australia. The number of mining trucks driving themselves on Caterpillar’s autonomous Command system will soon more than triple.
Cat recently announced that Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group has ordered 100 mining trucks be retrofitted with the autonomous mine truck platform at its Chichester Hub along with an unspecified number of trucks at its Solomon Hub. Both operations are located in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Since 2013, Fortescue has put 56 autonomous Cat 793F trucks into operation at the Solomon Hub. The new deal with Cat will activate more 793Fs there, while Chichester will see the infusion of 793F and Komatsu 930E models operating on the platform. As we reported last week, the Cat Command system is brand agnostic, capable of retrofitting to a mining operation’s mixed truck fleet.
Cat says the autonomous trucks at Fortescue’s Solomon operation have achieved 20% greater production than manned trucks working in the same mining complex. These 56 trucks interact with more than 150 manned vehicles – graders, loaders, water carts, light vehicles and dozers – managed through the Cat MineStar System.
In 4.5 years of operation, Cat says its autonomous trucks have hauled 400-plus million metric tons of material with greater than 99.95% system availability, all without a lost time injury. And because there are no shift changes, breaks or lunches, the trucks put in an average of 2.5 hours more work a day more than manned vehicles.
Driverless trucks are also expected to be phased in at Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill iron ore mine in Western Australia from the second half of 2018.
“We, I think, are firmly of the view that autonomous trucks are the way of the future, which is clearly a major industry trend. At this point in time we are working towards looking at starting the final implementation, or the phased implementation, probably in the second half of next year,” said Barry Fitzgerald, chief executive of Roy Hill,
“The implementation model is driven by resources and as we develop the pit. So that when you go to autonomy, as we develop different pits we need to do it pit by pit by pit,” he said.
Fitzgerald said eventually, Roy Hill’s autonomous truck fleet would number a bit over 70, very similar to the current truck fleet.
Asked if the implementation of driverless trucks would mean job losses, or re-deployment of staff, he said: “I think it’s a mixture of both. You need to remember that Roy Hill as a business is continuing to ramp up though. We have got another 24 trucks, the first of which are being delivered at the moment, we’ve also got a contractor there, so there is a transition.”
He also said: “We’re of the view that people do need to achieve their potential. And so we will work with them, and I think you’ll see that there’ll be some people re-skilled (and) re-trained. Some people may choose not to stay with us because obviously they may like driving trucks or doing something else. And so we will continue on to train and develop people, we will expect to redeploy people, but we’d expect there will be a reduction in people long term, not necessarily from our current numbers of people.”
Fitzgerald also said that Roy Hill had recently commissioned its third autonomous drill, with more to be commissioned soon.