MACA Pursues Fully Autonomous Mining Fleet with SafeAI

MACA knew the future of mining was autonomous, but the cost point had never been suitable to a contract mining application. With clients spanning from junior miners with a single project to tier one global miners, MACA is Western Australia's largest open-pit mining contractor with operations across the Pilbara, Goldfields and Murchison.

According to Shane Clark, MACA’s General Manager for Estimating and Technical Services, the critical first step on the road to autonomy was deciding who to work with. “We had been canvasing the autonomy space for years, looking for a roadmap and trajectory to deliver those cost savings into our environment, but more importantly, a team behind the scenes who had been there before.”

MACA chose to work with SafeAI, a SiliconValley company with autonomous retrofit applications for heavy vehicles, and its Australian distributor Position Partners.

“SafeAI’s team members were behind the first generation of autonomy in the mining environment,” explained Clark. 

Within six months, the newly minted partnership had completed a successful proof of concept in the Pilbara, where they tested SafeAI’s retrofit autonomous kit on one of MACA’s EH3500 model 180T dump trucks.

“The main goal of the proof of concept was to test that this system could work in a contracting environment whilst making very few changes to the vehicle,” said Clark. “We chose Hitachi EH3500AC3 because it has a very good on-board traction control system. A big benefit to this system is that by retrofitting, we're able to retain the advances that the OEMs have already made in their vehicles.”

In March 2022, the three companies formalised their intentions with a MoU to deploy autonomy across MACA’s fleet. The rollout includes autonomy in a multiple truck environment, as well as retrofitting various truck types at a number of MACA’s sites. The MoU marks a significant milestone in the development and deployment of contractor autonomy and in MACA’s pursuit of this technology.

MACA Chief Executive Officer Mike Sutton is pleased to have formalised their intent to continue working with SafeAI and Position Partners.

There are numerous benefits to automating a haul fleet, such as improving safety by taking workers out of impact zones and improving the organisation’s goal of achieving zero-harm.

It also provides a clear opportunity to upskill the workforce - the experience of iron ore miners shows that autonomy can be implemented without incurring significant job losses through retraining and redeployment.

Cost savings can be significant – increased productivity from more efficient driving behaviours and real-time information flows, increased utilisation of each vehicle, extended asset life on tyres and brakes, as well a reduction in fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, are some of the cost and productivity gains that can be achieved.

With these benefits in mind, SafeAI founder and Chief Executive Bibhrajit Halder said the mining industry is at the forefront of deploying autonomous and connected technologies.

“SafeAI in partnership with MACA improves on existing autonomous technology, while at the same time making these solutions more accessible to mid-tier miners and their contractors.” Position Partners has worked with MACA over several years to deploy a range of technology solutions, from high precision systems to machine guidance, explained CEO Martin Nix.

SAFEAI’S RETROFIT APPLICATION

SafeAl’s autonomous platform is interoperable and vehicle agnostic. Chief Development Officer David Greig said this retrofit capability was a key consideration for MACA.

“As contractors, we have to stay highly mobile, our workforce and our equipment must be mobile. Being able to move from lithium to gold, to nickel, to iron ore within Western Australia is our core competency. To find a solution with artificial intelligence and machine learning that can do that is fundamentally exciting and fundamentally important to our future.”

According to Mr. Clark, the technology is a game-changer for their client-centric business, being a versatile, scalable solution, which is unmatched in the industry right now, with profound implications for site safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

“We expect to see quick take-up from our customers as they begin to see the tremendous impact of this technology.”

IMPROVED TECHNOLOGY BRINGS SAFETY AND COST BENEFITS

Early generations of autonomous vehicles have been present in heavy industry for many years, but it wasn’t until around 2016 that the technology really came into its own.

Step-changes in technology, including higher processing onboard GPUs, a s well as developments in AI and deep neural networks, were key advancements enabling more sophisticated obstacle detection and classification, path planning, and localisation.

This happened concurrently with significant investment and maturity in the sensor and component industry for passenger autonomous vehicles, which raised the robustness and reliability of these components.

Mr. Halder noted that early automation solutions were also often costly and difficult to scale, but technology advancements have changed this.

“This lowers the barrier to entry for companies, which accelerates the deployment of autonomous heavy equipment. We believe autonomy can transform the mining industry for the better – but to reach its full potential, autonomous heavy equipment has to be rolled out at scale.

“We’ve built the technology to make that scalability possible; now, with a forward-thinking partner in MACA, and a massive opportunity in Australia’s mining market, we can help set a new standard for this industry.”

Read the full article in Resource Review