On the MINEXCHANGE SME convention in February 2024 in Phoenix, Wenco Worldwide Mining Programs’ President and CEO, Andrew Pyne, offered on open autonomy. He started by suggesting that it is probably not enterprise as regular for AHS within the medium to long run.
“What we’ve seen in mining, is that the adoption of autonomy in additional advanced environments – that aren’t the Pilbara in Western Australia – is beginning to stagnate. We’re beginning to see fleets being decommissioned and we’re seeing some actual adoption challenges. We’re additionally seeing some actually attention-grabbing evolutions within the early adopters of autonomy – firms like Fortescue altering course on how they will deploy autonomy. Rio Tinto approached Wenco greater than 5 years in the past and right this moment we’re engaged with them on their right-sized autonomous truck challenge. As we see the emergence of recent know-how within the space of automation – together with the necessities for carbon emissions targets – the premise that greater is healthier within the haulage fleet is de facto being challenged.”
He added that whereas Wenco is working straight with Rio Tinto, it is aware of different main miners are additionally adopting or evaluating the adoption of this functionality. “We’re taking a look at a future the place you should have combined fleets of bigger haul vehicles but additionally smaller haul vehicles as properly.”
Pyne argues that the mining {industry} is going through difficult market dynamics – ESG obligations and ambitions, workforce constraints, entry to capital and marrying elevated prices with stress to up productiveness. “Innovation within the mining enterprise mannequin shouldn’t be optionally available. Rising applied sciences are addressing challenges in order that miners can plan prematurely and speed up operational profit. Open autonomy is a keystone in innovation and an industry-based initiative specializing in creating new value-based haulage fashions. Open autonomy techniques and a convergence with electrification initiatives are enabling a rising pattern in mining towards using smaller, extra versatile autonomous haul vehicles to sort out mining challenges.”
Wenco is a number one world fleet administration system firm with quick rising fatigue administration, open autonomy, machine steering and asset well being administration applied sciences. It has been a completely owned subsidiary of Hitachi CM since 2009 – and right this moment has about 100 clients utilizing its Wencomine FMS – “a few of these clients are saying they need to undertake autonomy however within the present area of how autonomy is deployed, meaning we must cease utilizing your FMS, and we actually don’t need to try this, so that they requested us what we have been going to do about it. Innovation occurs when there’s a disaster – and our disaster was that our clients have been telling us – this pattern in the direction of automation within the present approach wherein it’s being delivered by Caterpillar and Komatsu – implies that we should cease utilizing your know-how. And we had clients sharing a few of the limitations of the established automation options. What Caterpillar and Komatsu have achieved in autonomy could be very beneficial. So, we’re targeted on the place there may be extra worth that the {industry} can acquire by way of the emergence of a brand new technology of know-how suppliers.”
However what’s Wenco’s definition of open autonomy? “It’s a time period that one in all our engineers got here up with in 2018. It’s a distinction to an OEM-based closed stack answer coming from Caterpillar and Komatsu. So, in that technology of applied sciences, for those who wished to go autonomous as a miner, that meant you have been successfully committing your self to 1 OEM and – all of the truck fleet are one make, all of the know-how stack comes from the OEM and all of the IT/OT integrations are locked to what the OEM decides. You may’t have a combined fleet – and in lots of instances it might imply you would need to purchase new vehicles that you just hadn’t deliberate to. The change administration, adoption and capital price are all important. These firms had constructed very built-in, tightly coupled techniques the place all the important thing constructing blocks – vehicles, situational consciousness, autonomous driver, site visitors administration and FMS, have been from one vendor. Very monolithic – however it delivered a price – no query. However the locked worth of a single OEM method and dedication doesn’t signify what the market now’s trying to put money into.”
He continued: “We aren’t a truck OEM – whereas we’re owned by Hitachi Building Equipment, we function fairly independently from them in the best way we do enterprise. Once we launched into the duty of contributing to an Open Autonomy framework, we began by defining what are the logical separation factors between the assorted know-how items that make up the system. You may have the truck, notion tech and drive by wire from one provider, for instance, then the completely different implementation and integration providers from one other, and the FMS and site visitors administration from one other.”
Pyne stated that it was clear this needed to be an {industry} led initiative and because it began on this path, one in all Wenco’s engineers has taken a number one function in a workgroup to outline and set up a brand new ISO commonplace – ISO 23725: Autonomous System and Fleet Administration System Interoperability. And this commonplace Utility Programming Interface (API) is available for anybody that wishes to make use of it. “There’s now a rising variety of firms that we’ve got been participating with that reinforces the {industry} want for open techniques method. Wenco understands that the ISO commonplace is predicted to be revealed by finish 2024. And this method creates the chance for brand spanking new entrants, not deters them.” Hideshi Fukumoto, Hitachi CM CTO summed it up properly in 2019: “We consider that when you have an open method, and assist new entrants combine with buyer operations, you received’t get new opponents, you’ll get new companions – and collectively we can present higher autonomy options to clients.”
Enabling this paradigm evolution, Pyne stated, requires three issues from miners – establishing the open structure/protocols; proving a commercially prepared and accessible answer; and influencing the OEMs to stick to the protocols by way of demand facet stress – or dwelling with reverse engineered drive by wire options. However the important thing advantages are important – open techniques allow new improvements to be deployed to seize incremental worth from conventional Degree 4 OEM autonomy. It additionally supplies additional price discount and productiveness improve outcomes. Moreover, it accelerates the ESG drivers for miners by way of emissions discount by utilizing electrical drives, trolley techniques, battery powered and smaller payload vehicles.
Again to this truck sizing query – what’s the proper measurement for autonomous vehicles? Pyne: “Taking the three massive Pilbara gamers for example, all of them have the identical points – they’ve loads of massive mines, they’re mining 100s of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of iron ore every year, plus loads of rail and overland conveying and crushing infrastructure. Rio Tinto is producing over 300 Mt a 12 months alone – so loads of mineral sources should be changed on an annual foundation – in case you are opening up new mines many 10s of kilometres away from present operations and infrastructure – what are your choices? Rail and overland conveyors come at an enormous price. However when you have a excessive velocity, Degree 5, autonomous and electrified truck possibility, that precludes the necessity for that costly infrastructure.” Pyne stated he had had comparable conversations with a mining shopper in Chile the place it had recognized potential deposits that have been at present not financial with present situations, however with these smaller versatile vehicles, they may very well be.
Smaller vehicles additionally include different monetary advantages resembling payload to weight ratio. With a big inflexible 200 t truck, for each one tonne of metal you’ll be able to solely carry two tonnes of payload, plus it requires a big quantity of diesel for materials haulage. For a smaller 40 to 50 t truck, the ratio works out to be one tonne of metal for 4 tonnes of payload. Smaller vehicles can help extra selective mining facilitated by new applied sciences – with lowered dilution and strip ratio and elevated ore restoration. Smaller vehicles additionally enable for narrower haul roads and better velocity longer hauls. With extra vehicles it additionally means your manufacturing is much less affected by breakdowns. On the electrification entrance, it’s nonetheless going to be some years till giant battery vehicles obtain the required productiveness in a full fleet sense – with smaller vehicles it’s seemingly going to be a actuality throughout the subsequent few years.
Pyne then reviewed a few of Wenco’s present tasks. Rio Tinto have been fairly open they’re testing decrease profile 50 t Scania vehicles at their websites. On this occasion, AHS-FMS messages are built-in over the cloud, so Scania can ship AHS throughout the cloud based mostly on a mixture of sensors however requiring much less actual time connectivity. Staffed Digging Items are geared up with Wenco Excessive Precision Steering to identify autonomous vehicles. This right-sized autonomous truck challenge is a collaboration between Rio Tinto, Scania and Wenco that joins collectively a group of over 300 engineers.
Wenco is a part of Rio Tinto’s right-sized autonomous truck challenge together with Scania
Pyne stated while there may be nonetheless appreciable work to be achieved, we aren’t too removed from reaching estimated the required know-how readiness degree (TRL) to help deployments.
At Roy Hill, Wenco’s FMS and Open Autonomy service adopted by ASI Mining’s Mobius platform has established the interoperability demanded for combined HME tools fleet in autonomous operations. Properly documented by IM in a number of articles, it is a combined Cat and Hitachi fleet and can quickly have 96 autonomous vehicles working – although these are bigger inflexible mining vehicles.
Pyne concluded: “Quite a lot of massive miners have now achieved the sums and wish to undertake each open autonomy and smaller vehicles the place they make sense. In some instances, they’re additionally investing in us to assist speed up supply and be capable to help this. And naturally, underlying loads of it are the carbon emissions discount targets they’ve dedicated to, the place smaller battery vehicles will get them there sooner.” Our firm imaginative and prescient is ‘reshaping the way forward for mining’ and with the precise companions from the know-how sector and collaborative progressive miners, we’re on the precise path to reaching that.”