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Another Autonomous Case in Practice: Rio Tinto In June, miner Rio Tinto revealed it had met a notable milestone in its autonomous endeavor, the Mine of the Future program, when its fleet of autonomous haul trucks recorded a total of 200 million mt of material moved in the Pilbara, Western Australia. One of Rio Tinto's massive Komatsu 930E autonomous haul trucks moved the milestone 200 th million mt at Yandi-coogi- na mine in late May. Since commencing Rio Tinto's AHS trucks moved the first 100 million mt by April 2013 and then the next 100 million mt just 13 months later. "In 2012, ore was loaded autonomously into a crusher at our Yandicoogina opera- tions — making it the first autonomous mine in Australia," Rio Tinto Iron Ore, China, Korea and Japan Chief Executive Andrew Harding said. "We are proud to be at the forefront of developing and using ground-breaking technology." As Harding noted at the time, the autonomous technology has the potential to bring value and productivity benefits through decreased variability, improved schedule efficiency and early identifica- tion of bottlenecks in the system — all fac- tors the Pilbara mine had realized, along with significant savings in maintenance, tire life and fuel. Rio Tinto is the largest owner and opera- tor of autonomous trucks in the world after recent additions to the Pilbara fleet earlier in 2014. A s o f e a r l y J u n e , t h e r e w e r e 5 3 autonomous trucks operating across Rio T i n t o m i n e s i t e s a t Y a n d i c o o g i n a , Nammuldi and Hope Downs 4. The fleet had driven 3.9 million km at that point — equivalent to five return trips from the Pilbara to the moon or driving around the Earth's circumference 98 times. They r e s p o n d t o G P S d i r e c t i o n s t o d e l i v e r l o a d s 2 4 h o u r s a d a y s u p e r v i s e d b y remote operators. Haul Truck Ergonomics Focus of NIOSH Work As exciting as autonomous haulage is, the general truth — depending on whom is being questioned — is that widespread use in North America still has a fairly long and bumpy road ahead. There is other ongoing, crucial work in haul truck design and safety that has application in a much closer timeframe. One of those efforts has been taken on by researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) — that being the development and evalua- tion of a smartphone-based audit tool to evaluate haul truck ergonomics for enhanced safety of operators. The program, being built and tested by NIOSH's Patrick Dempsey, Jonisha Pollard, William Porter, Alan Mayton, John Heberger, Sean Gallagher and Leanna Reardon, offers specific point-in-time assessments of how well jobs and work- places have been designed from an ergonomics standpoint. The group has developed ergonomics audits for three types of mining opera- tions, including haul truck operations as well as bag filling and closing (e.g., small bags and intermediate bulk containers) and maintenance and repair tasks per- formed at coal preparation and minerals processing plants. "Audits are proactive tools and can help a mining organization identify which divi- sions, plants, departments, or work areas can most benefit from ergonomics input," h a u l t r u c k s c o n t i n u e d 28 www.coalage.com November 2014