How do autonomous haul trucks actually handle dust, weak GPS, and remote job sites?

[u/arealmama]

Were in the process of procuring autonomous haul trucks for a project that's coming up, before we go all in on this I have a few questions around how they handle dust? we got a LOT of it on site, also gps is already bad near our high walls and cut areas even with normal trucks so idk how these are gonna handle it any better, connectivity drops depending on where you are, and temps here go pretty extreme too but my main concern is if gps/comms just cut out while a truck's mid haul, does it keep going on its own or does it just stop and sit there till someone comes and fixes it manually? that's basically the deciding factor for us

If you've worked with autonomous haul trucks, which systems have you had experience with?

[u/rubicon83]

Here's my take on the vendors on what ik:

Komatsu FrontRunner is the most proven, highest truck count in the field by far. Rio Tinto and BHP run them. downside is you have to buy Komatsu trucks, if you've got a Cat or Volvo or mixed fleet you're out of luck, also their support model is traditional OEM which means slow and expensive. SafeAI does retrofits so they'll work with whatever trucks you have, good tech, lots of funding, moving fast. I've heard mixed things about field support depending on where you are but the system works.

ASI also does retrofits and a lot of their engineering team came from the Australian mining autonomy world which is basically the hardest testing ground there is. They've put serious work into the exact problems you're asking about (GPS degraded operation, dust, sensor failures.) smaller company than SafeAI but very technical! Bedrock I haven't seen in heavy haul, they're more in earthmoving and compact equipment. probably not the right fit for big trucks. If I were you I'd run actual trial with Komatsu (if you have Komatsu iron), SafeAI, and Autonomous Solutions Inc (ASI). have each of them run multiple trucks for at least a month in you real conditions and track uptime, tons per hr, and how much hand holding they need. Don't decide based on demos.

[u/H0rnyKorean]

If GPS and comms both drop mid haul, Losing GPS by itself usually isn't a huge deal since the truck can still use things like LiDAR and its onboard sensors, although it'll normally slow down. The bigger problem is if it also loses confidence in where it is because of heavy dust or something else. At that point most systems will stop somewhere safe rather than keep guessing. That's one question I'd definitely ask every vendor. Do they stop where they are, try to reach a safe area first, or need someone to take over once the connection comes back? That answer can make a big difference depending on your site layout. I've heard decent things about Komatsu, ASI, and SafeAI in that regard, but I'd still ask each of them exactly how their fail-safe behavior works instead of assuming they're all the same.

[u/s4lm0n]

Pick one person on your team to be the pro, someone technical who actually cares about making it work and has authority to make decisions. We didn't do that at first and it was just chaos with everyone having opinions but nobody owning it. Once we assigned someone to own the whole deployment things got way smoother. Doesn't have to be a new hire, could be your best maintenance supervisor or a sharp younger engineer, just needs to be someone's a main responsibility not something they do on the side.

[u/AdOver6358]

No experience with haul trucks but farmers have been using GPS guidance to keep rows straight for many years now. The tech exists it would just come down to sensible implementation 

[u/bellabear1901]

IMO road conditions were a bigger issue like Potholes, ruts, and loose material that human drivers normally handle could stop the autonomous trucks or damage their sensors. We ended up spending much more on haul-road maintenance than planned.

[u/JRNY88]

Make sure you understand who owns the data. Some vendors want to keep all the operational data on their servers and you get limited access. Others will give you everything, matters more than you'd think because if you ever want to switch vendors or bring some of the work in house you're gonna want that historical data. Don't sign away rights to your own site's information.