Autonomous trucks start mining daytime operations

EACON Mining Technology’s fleet of six retrofitted Komatsu HD1500 trucks has begun day-shift autonomous operations without safety drivers at the Havana Pit in Western Australia, marking a significant milestone in live production.

The project, which commenced day-shift autonomous operations, is a pioneering retrofit deployment of autonomous haulage technology on Komatsu HD1500 haul trucks and the first autonomous haulage deployment in an active mining production environment in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields region of Australia.

The day-shift rollout is also upskilling the site team for future night-shift autonomous operations, and follows an extensive period of drive-by-wire system design and validation, system integration, localised autonomy feature validation, and safety tests undertaken to support deployment under Australian mining conditions at the Mulgarrie operation.

Ahead of the commencement of autonomous operations at the Havana Pit, a range of infrastructure and operational readiness activities were completed to prepare the site for live production, including the conversion of trucks drawn from existing operations for autonomous operation through EACON’s OEM-agnostic autonomy solution, including drive-by-wire retrofit.

By leveraging in-service assets and existing haul road infrastructure, the project demonstrates a practical pathway for introducing autonomous haulage while minimising capital expenditure and disruption to ongoing production, which is a key consideration for mining operations.

Operational and safety performance of the fleet will continue to be evaluated as the project progresses, with the transition from a test environment to live production representing an achievement for the teams involved and highlighting the growing maturity of retrofit autonomous haulage solutions in Australia.

Elaine Jin, Chief Growth Officer at EACON Australia, said: “Transitioning autonomous haulage into a live production environment raises the bar for on-site support across AHS operations, technical support and training.”

Through the NGF project, EACON is building a strong local support team and the operational experience required to support future autonomous haulage projects in Australia.

For now, the focus will be on continuing to evaluate the operational and safety performance of the fleet, and on building on the experience and expertise gained through this project to support future autonomous haulage projects in Australia.