5d ago

TIL: Australia was the first to use it and is leading in autonomous mining

www.abc.net.au

Driverless trucks move iron ore at automated Rio Tinto mines

I was reading how China had started to test unmanned trucks, and in researching found that Australia was already a decade ahead.

(2014) Rio Tinto: rolling out the world’s first fully driverless mines

(2018) World-first autonomous trains deployed at Rio Tinto’s iron ore operations - This one is also apparently the 'worlds biggest robot'

(2021) Rio Tinto to deploy world’s first fully autonomous water trucks at Gudai-Darri

8 comments

Fun anecdotal fact, when they were doing the trials for driverless trucks the wear on the tires increased because the trucks were driving through the same ruts every time. They had to add some deviation into the GPS to stop that from happening.
Don't worry, the decision to destroy an ancient sacred Aboriginal site wasn't automated, they chose to, despite warnings
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/rio-tinto-apologises-for-destroying-aboriginal-sacred-site/idqwqenbo
Nice. Now we can ship our minerals and resources overseas with less of our workers being paid to do so.
- Nice now people won’t have to risk their lives a bit more.
  Now work on getting your government to tax them and take back your money You are a democracy right?
  
  Right, it’s totally reasonable that the burden be on citizens and not corporations who consistently attempt to capsize the economy with greed. Are you American because it’d tempting to be equally condescending about their “democracy”.
- Dw there will be plenty of sales jobs created from selling overseas manufactured goods back to Australians.
Everybodies building rockets to get to the asteroids to mine them, but it'll be Australian mining companies that do the mining.
These trucks will be popular quickly once they become cheaper than human labour.
Human labour costs:
Drug testing. Mining has strict rules and lots of mines drug test.
Pay. Bonus, overtime, vacation, sick days, etc.
Less work for HR. Reduction of harassment, workplace bullying, conflicts between coworkers and supervisors.
Other pay, like retirement contribution and health and benefits.
human accidents (roll over, death, hitting something, etc.)
All these will be eliminated with unmanned trucks. Heavy duty truck drivers make over $100k so they are good jobs, even with a lot of mines having 12 hours shifts.

8 comments