Autonomous Mining Systems
‘Rio Tinto is a global mining company that has been working towards the vision of the Mine of the Future™ over the last decade. This programme has resulted in a number of significant robotic and automation innovations in mining. Rio Tinto now operates the largest fleet of autonomous haul trucks in the world, led the development and deployment of autonomous drills, and is working to deploy the world’s first long distance heavy freight autonomous rail system. Equipment automation is a component of the Mine of the Future™, but systems are required to control, co-ordinate and optimise the activities of this range of autonomous equipment.
In this talk, Dr. Glenn Callow will give an overview of the automation systems that have been deployed within Rio, the vision for the Mine of the Future™ and some of the ongoing challenges that remain in automating mining.’