Komatsu celebrates decade of autonomous operation
Over 100 autonomous mining trucks now operating across the globe since the first commercial deployment in Chile in 2008Komatsu is celebrating a significant milestone in its Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) deployment, announcing plans to further accelerate utilisation of the system around the world.
Today, more than 100 AHS trucks operate in Australia, North and South America.
In 2005, Komatsu began the AHS trial at CODELCO’s copper mine in Chile and succeeded in achieving the world’s first commercial AHS deployment with CODELCO in January 2008.
A second successful deployment followed in late 2008 at Rio Tinto’s iron ore mine in Australia and Rio Tinto currently operates AHS trucks in four mines in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
The entire AHS operation is controlled remotely and efficiently from Rio Tinto’s operations centre in Perth, roughly 1500km from the mines. In 2013, Komatsu supported Suncor’s pilot of AHS in a section of their oil sands mine in Canada.
Today, the AHS operates around the clock, hauling three different commodities, in six mines across three continents.
By the end of 2017, Komatsu’s AHS has hauled a whopping 1.5 billion tonnes of material.
Komatsu claims the AHS has helped reduce load and haul unit costs by more than 15 per cent, compared with conventional haulage methods. It is also significantly safer than operator driven trucks as even a minor error can cause a serious accident.
In addition, the AHS's optimised automatic controls reduce sudden acceleration and abrupt steering, resulting in a 40 per cent improvement in tyre life, Komatsu says.
To extend the AHS benefits to operations with manned haul fleets, Komatsu conducted and successfully completed trials of its AHS retrofit kit at Rio Tinto’s existing mine in September 2017.
The retrofit kit, mounted on a Komatsu electric drive standard 830E truck, enabled the truck to operate autonomously. As a result, Komatsu recently received an order from Rio Tinto for 29 AHS retrofit kits, to be installed on 830E standard trucks currently operating at Rio Tinto’s Brockman 4 mine.
Currently, the company is focusing on ways to expand the retrofit kit to other main models of its electric drive standard trucks, as well as enhance the AHS in mixed operations.
The planned enhancements will enable manned haul trucks of any make to safely interoperate with Komatsu AHS trucks in a blended fleet operation.
Under this initiative, Komatsu hopes to offer mining customers solutions that will help them make the transition to fully automated operations.
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