by Nick Drew | Fri 26 Jul 2019
The Road to Autonomy
It’s a bit of a controversial topic, but running machines autonomously, or at least semi-autonomously on massive mining jobs is gathering pace. I think it will be many years before we see the complete replacement of the human element but it’s a scary prospect to think about!
In our everyday lives we continue to see the erosion of the human element in many aspects, your local supermarket for instance, where attended tills are being replaced by self-service machines, doing people out of work, which is worrying.
Toowoomba-based Wolff Group, incorporating Wolff Mining, was the first company in Australia to showcase the latest in this technology. In a large open-cut mine near Blackwater they became the first to trial the state-of-the-art semi-autonomous dozers.
Photo courtesy of the Toowoomba Chronicle.
The giant Cat D11T’s are controlled by an operator sitting in luxury in a control room which could in fact be anywhere or in a mobile control vehicle. However, these operators are not just controlling one dozer, he can actually control up to three at once. Readers may recall how Finning gave visitors to its stand at the Hillhead mining and quarrying show last year, the chance to operate a dozer some 5000 miles away in the Arizona desert. Some of the visitors we spoke to on the day were amazed at how effective the control system was and many were mind blown by it all, myself included!
In the following video from Australian Caterpillar dealer Hastings Deering, the husband and wife team behind the Wolff Group Terry and Wanda Wolff talk about their decision to go down the semi-autonomous route and what it will mean for their business, employees and their customers.