Big mining firms are switching to driverless trucks and other autonomous equipment.
It doesn't get much more remote than this. I'm in inland Western Australia, at Rio Tinto’s Greater Nammuldi iron ore mine.No-one lives permanently here. Around 400 workers are on the site at any one time, and they are flown in, working between four and eight days, depending on their shift pattern, before flying home.
I sigh with relief as it deftly turns and continues in the direction we have just come. “Did it make you feel uncomfortable?,” asks the vehicle’s driver Dwane Pallentine, a production superintendent.Greater Nammuldi has a fleet of more than 50 self-driving trucks that operate independently on pre-defined courses, along with a handful that remain manually driven and work separately in a different part of the mine.
It has encased our vehicle in a virtual bubble that the self-driving trucks "see" and which causes them to manage their proximity by slowing or stopping as necessary. It’s the nerve centre for all the company’s Pilbara iron ore operations, which span 17 mines in total, including the three making up Greater Nammuldi.
It has also improved productivity – to the tune of about 15%, he estimates. Autonomous equipment can be used more because there are no gaps due to shift changes or breaks. And autonomous trucks can also go faster when there is less staff-operated equipment on the scene. Instead, there have been redeployments: truck drivers have joined the OC as controllers themselves, been reskilled to operate different pieces of equipment, such as excavators, loaders and dozers, or gone to drive manual trucks at different sites.
And there is also a risk that controllers’ workloads can be overwhelming - it is a busy, high stakes job.
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