In Australian quarries, huge dump truck robots are commissioned.

In Australia, at the Rio-Tinto deposit, iron ore (by the way, one of the richest in the world) is mined mainly by open pit, that is, in quarries. If you have never heard of what an iron ore quarry is, and have not seen them, I recommend to look at photos though on the web, if not visit in person. These are huge man-made pits, so to speak, with complex infrastructure. Iron ore is produced on a large scale. We will not dwell on the methods of ore mining, but its transportation from the quarry is carried out with the help of huge dump trucks. Some of these avtomobilchiki capable of transporting tens of tons of ore. Needless to say, the driver is needed for each truck, however, the human factor sometimes leads to difficult situations. And in Australia they decided to launch the Autonomous Hauling System (AHS) program, equipping 210-ton trucks with an autonomous control system.

These trucks will give odds to robots cars from Google and other manufacturers, at least for its size and scale of work. So, all this is not just a concept, the program is already being implemented, and test dump trucks are already going about on industrial roads. It is worth noting that the dump truck is not completely autonomous, the path for it is still paved by a human operator working remotely. The dump truck follows the intended path, independently avoiding obstacles (for example, car drivers, receiving a command about the need to maintain a distance).
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In addition, operators of excavators who work directly in the cabins of these industrial giants can also monitor the work of the dump truck. The operator, for example, lets you know when the dump truck should get close to pick up another batch of finished iron ore. In addition, if something goes wrong, the excavator operator can signal his dump truck partner to stop, and then provide an opportunity for technical specialists to deal with the situation.

In general, the whole system is designed to automate the process of extracting iron ore as much as possible and to make work safe (as far as possible) for humans. Of course, the most effective way to protect a person in a career is to remove a person altogether :)

Here is a more detailed video on this topic, I think many will be interested in this issue.



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