Iron ore producer Fortescue Metals Group (ASX:FMG) revealed Friday that one of its massive driverless trucks collided with another at one of its Western Australia mines earlier this week. There were no injuries.
The truck, said the company, was traveling at low speed and crashed into another that was parked at its Christmas Creek iron ore mine in the Pilbara region.
One of the trucks was traveling at low speed and ran into another that was parked at its Christmas Creek iron ore mine in the Pilbara region.
Chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said the incident was not the result of any failure of Fortescue’s autonomous haulage systems (AHS).
“Since the introduction of the first AHS truck at Solomon in 2012, AHS trucks have safely travelled over 24.7 million kilometres,” Gaines said in a statement.
It’s believed the collision occurred after wi-fi coverage, which provides communications between the truck and Fortescue’s control centre, dropped out.
The miner has been converting its extensive fleet of huge mining trucks into autonomous vehicles over the past several years.
Fortescue, the world’s No. 4 iron ore producer, is conducting a full investigation into the incident.
13 Comments
lostinchianti
Imagine a Huawei controlled G5 network and us riding in driverless cars…
steveboz .
We should make all Australian Parliament politicians Senate and House of Reps Chauffeur cars driver-less and organise a demolition derby!
Bryan O'Reilly
Um, trying to make sense of this, isn’t the WiFi part of the AHS?
Chief executive Elizabeth Gaines said the incident was not the result of any failure of Fortescue’s autonomous haulage systems (AHS).
BUT.
It’s believed the collision occurred after wi-fi coverage, which provides communications between the truck and Fortescue’s control centre, dropped out.
RoPo
In our part of S. America we have 3 expensive, invisible fall guys whose names are: “Me ain’t know”, “Not me” and “Ask dem other boys”.
Dan Gurtler
That is a failure plain and simple. If the Wi-Fi went out there has to be a back up system to prevent collisions. Any collision provoked by an autonomous vehicle is a failure.
R.Lindon Coutts
I’m surprised that these don’t run on VHF channels with connectivity to other systems for monitoring. WiFi doesn’t seem like the correct technology. #BWTHAIAWDIK (but who the hell am I and what do I know?)
Jeremy Ward
As someone who specializes in wireless vehicle and critical communications networks, I think there’s more to the story than what the mining operator has said. These networks are designed to be resilient and are supposed to lack single points of failure.
Many mining operators are considering switching over to dedicated LTE networks to replace their current “Wi-Fi” Mesh networks (some already have).
There’s a number of reasons for this, but guaranteed Quality of Service delivering lower latency is the main reason. Other reasons include:
• better reliability
• less interference and better interference resilience
• better coverage
• true over-the-air Quality-of-Service (QoS) guaranteeing the timely delivery of critical data
• better latency
• more throughput
• support for additional use cases like handheld devices
As the other commenter points out, there’s not enough available spectrum in the VHF bands for this use case, not to mention it’s more likely to suffer from natural sources of interference compared to higher frequencies. As for UHF, LTE Band 31 runs at 450MHz but band availability varies by country and region.
Some of these private LTE networks run at as low as 700MHz or as high as 2.6GHz; LTE network equipment running entirely in the unlicensed 5GHz band will also be widely available this year, which brings the technology in reach of all mining operators (no need for dedicated licensed spectrum). Toronto’s Redline Communications is focused on delivering LTE for this specific vertical market as well as shipping, oil & gas, rail, etc.
Les Thomson
That didn’t happen it rained
gil knappmiller
–what am I missing—would seem that any failure such as this should bring an automatic shutdown of the equipment—???
gil knappmiller
–and for a little history–the concept of “fail-safe” is not new–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_air_brake
Jorge Coddia
Te statement about this incident is not a failure of AHS, is a simple excuse. Trying to deny a clear fact in the name of the science progress, or the big earning of the company, is not the best option. Please, just be honest and recognize that the lack of wifi in a point of the mine was your responsibility. Thank you
Mickeebee68
The Govt needs gone. Selling us and our jobs out quicker than a hooker at a half price lay day. Big industry if it’s not helping the working man needs reigning in.
Raul Ramirez
Trying to make sense of the problem.
Is that Fortescue doesn’t believe in redundancy systems? Or those implementing the system are Accountants and not Engineers?