Institute of Mining, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Khabarovsk, Russia:

A. A. Sobolev, Senior Researcher, Candidate of Engineering Sciences, alexsoboll@mail.ru

Safety, efficiency and reduction of production costs have always been and remain the main objectives for mines, and the improvement of production processes and mining equipment is the main direction for reaching the objectives. The advanced, perspective and quickly developing tendency in the world’s practice is expansion of artificial intelligence and minimization of human participation in the mining processes, including rock haulage. In this paper the review of the international experience gained in autonomous haulage toward higher safety and efficiency of mining has been carried out. The review shows that engineering of unmanned dump trucks has been implemented since 2008. The founders of such technologies became such mining companies as RioTinto in Australia and Codelco in Chile jointly with manufacturers Komatsu and Caterpillar recently adjoined by dump truck maker Hitachi. The technology has been applied by the majority mining companies in the world for the latest ten years. However, the appreciable increase (a few times!) in the commercial introductions has taken place in the recent two years, with genuine plans of mining companies for the future evolvement and expansion of this trend. The world’s level of development of communication and data transmission systems, sensor and detector technologies, as well as IT allows replacing dump truck operators by the computer artificial intelligence. Construction of routes and driving of dump trucks with analysis, assessment and forecast of the road conditions can be done without human intervention. The use of an Autonomous Haulage System provides transportation of rocks in an automatic and uninterrupted mode 24/7 with significant increase in efficiency and safety. Due to the introduction of the system, the growth in technical and economic characteristics of transportation process has been achieved.

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