Robot Miners Take Over Western Australia
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- January 17, 2023
The mining industry in Western Australia has led the way in developing the “smart mine” of the future. This is culminating now in developments at the Roy Hill iron ore mine operated by Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart.
From March this year, the mine’s fleet of 96 conventional haul trucks will become driverless, a move three years in the making after Hancock Prospecting – the Rinehart company which owns the mine – entered into a partnership with automation company ASI Mining and solutions provider Epiroc.
Automation is a response to several challenges. While driving efficiency and cost reduction, it also solves ongoing manpower shortages in remote areas. There is also often a sustainability dividend from the efficiencies.
Roy Hill is already operating some automated trucks, working in a dedicated autonomous area and safely negotiating other vehicles, loading areas and dumps for waste.
The verification stage of the project is complete, and there are 10 converted haul trucks fitted with vehicle automation kits using ASI Mining’s traffic management and onboard automation systems.
The autonomous trucks operate 24/7 in the autonomous zone, and the fleet is meeting safety and productivity metrics and reportedly achieving significantly higher productivity rates than the conventional fleet.
Ultimately, Roy Hill will be the world’s biggest autonomous mine. The autonomous fleet will eventually comprise Caterpillar and Hitachi trucks in addition to more than 200 modified ancillary vehicles, which will interact with the haulage fleet.
Mel Torrie, the chief executive of ASI, says the Roy Hill milestones are a “major signal” to the rest of the mining industry that robot mining is the way of the future.
“It signifies that our OEM agnostic Mobius autonomous haulage system has reached a level of performance and maturity that can now provide value to the broader market,” Torrie said.
Autonomous railway
The progress at Roy Hill takes some of the spotlight away from rival Rio Tinto, which transitioned its 1,500 km railway network in the Western Australian Pilbara region to run autonomously in 2019, becoming the first heavy-haul railway in the world to operate as an automated network.
The Rio Tinto AutoHaul train system operates up to 50 automated and unmanned trains anytime. Each automated train hauls 28,000 tons of iron ore from the company’s 16 mines on a 40-hour, 800 km journey to two ports on the Western Australian coast.
AutoHaul has helped increase average train speeds by 6%, and the company believes this can be further improved.
Mel Torrie, the chief executive of ASI, says the Roy Hill milestones are a “major signal” to the rest of the mining industry that robot mining is the way of the future
Removing the two to three driver shift changes previously required has also cut an hour off the average journey. The section runtime variation between services is also down to 15-30 seconds, against 2.5 to 5 minutes when the trains were manned.
This helps the operator plan more efficient schedules, reduce bottlenecks and further boost productivity.
The project has not been without its challenges. The full deployment of the fully automated trains in June 2019 came four years later than planned and 12 years after Rio was ready for its first semi-autonomous run using its legacy signaling system.
A major challenge was whether the existing signaling system could function as the foundation for automated operation. There were issues with whether the legacy control system could transmit the required information.
The network control for the system is based in the WA capital of Perth, hundreds of kilometers away from the trains, and there were issues with managing additional information with the traditional track circuit system.
This prompted a move to communication-based train control via data radio direct to the locomotive.
Beyond haulage
Rio’s robot mining initiatives also extend beyond haulage.
The Gudai-Darri mine in WA opened in April 2019 and includes a robotic ore sampling laboratory that delivers visibility on ore grades extracted from the mine within minutes.
There are autonomous trucks and drills. A digital twin of the processing plant, enabling the testing of different scenarios before implementation.
Power comes from a 34-megawatt solar farm consisting of 83,000 solar panels.
Other mining operators are taking the lead from majors such as Rio and Hancock, and some are going further.
The autonomous vehicles at Newmont’s Boddington mine in WA, for example, are being converted to electric power to meet the company’s goal of operating at 100% carbon neutral by 2050.
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/IPGGutenbergUKLtd