IGO to record impairment against nickel assets in strategy shift
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Trials for Rio Tinto’s Mine of the Future autonomous haul truck (AHT) project began as far back as December 2008.
By April this year the robot army deployed in the Pilbara region of Western Australia had moved 100 million tonnes and traveled more than 1 million kilometers. The autonomous haul trucks are a key component in Rio Tinto’s strategy of employing next-generation technology to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve health, safety and environmental performance.
Rio Tinto expects have more than 40 trucks operating autonomously across three sites in the Pilbara by early 2014. The world’s number two miner is also looking at autonomous drills and trains and has already invested more than $500m in the train project.
This video and animation shows how the system – controlled from Perth some 1,500 km for the sites – works.
Rio Tinto Iron Ore – Mine of the Future from Toucan Creative on Vimeo.
6 Comments
christina
more robots less staff safety my arse next it will be jcb diggers automated this is just cost cutting nothing to do with safety thats more people loosing there jobs in africa.
christina
how many of the people that used to drive the trucks are now working in the new control centre? on the computers probably not many i cant see the ginger women sat in a truck all day can anyone else.
R Hcuorc
If the trucks were on tracks I would trust them a little more.
your joking
Super profits and only jobs for the lucky few. Be good if they didn’t sell their thought of what’s going to happen and show the true employment statics. 150 trucks = 450+ unemployed personal just for iron ore in Western Australia. Rio Tinto has no heart and valves community only profits.
Justme
Rio really needs to decide if they want to be a minor minor or a major. They have put huge costs in SG&A in London, tried to centralize in India, have fallen from 4th to 9th in Copper and their stock prices reflect that. There is no vision with the company anymore after blaming Albanese (vs the board) for some bad decisions. We are left with Harding to assume leadership where he did wonders for the Bingham Pit – I have sold my stock.
Time to get a real skill
It’s been coming for a long time people. Operators have been overpaid for a long time. Consider this:
Opearators required to keep a truck running on a 8/6 roster.
– 1 on D/S
– 1 on N/S
– 2 on R&R
Plus another for when those 4 are on holidays.
Thats 5 operators to keep one truck running. With employment costs of wages, super, site costs, flights, its well over $1,000,000 a year to have someone ‘attend’ the steering wheel. Automation costs are signifiicatly lower after the initial rollout, not to mention more productive, they don’t fall alsleep, don’t invent problems with their equipment and they don’t crash. Sure its less jobs, but maybe the operators should have done a trade to start with. Every mine offer apprentiships, but people are too lazy to do they hard work when they can sit on their arse and get paid a fortune, and pull up and play cards when it gets a bit wet. Well now the tides have turned. Tradies are ok and truck operators are not. I know plenty of good operators and plenty of ‘steering wheel attendants’ too. My Advice is upskill while you can. It’s on offer every year. There is no one to blame except yourself when your previous skill become obsolete. How do you thing the old telephone operator felt? If it was your own business, what would you do? For the record, These trucks are so accurate that they initally wore ruts in the roads as they were always in exactly the same spot. Anyone who has had a half aslepp operator veering towards them in the early hours should agree that this is a good thing.