The future of mining mobility is being advanced at Fortescue Metals Group (Fortescue), with the successful operational deployment of autonomous light vehicles (ALV’s) at the company’s mining operations in the Chichester Hub.
Developed by Fortescue’s Technology and Autonomy team as a solution to improve the efficiency of the Christmas Creek mobile maintenance team, ALV’s remove the need for fitters to make around 12,000 28-kilometre round trips annually to collect equipment and parts.
With the assistance of Ford Australia, four Ford Rangers have been retrofitted with an on-board vehicle automation system to support the driverless equipment transfer service, which will improve efficiency and safety by enabling team members to spend more time on maintaining assets.
The system features an integrated Lidar/Radar perception system that facilitates obstacle detection and dynamic obstacle avoidance, a comprehensive independent safety management and failsafe braking system and an extensive built-in system monitoring and fault response capability.
The successful deployment of ALV’s at Christmas Creek will provide the opportunity to implement a similar system at other operational sites to improve safety, productivity and efficiency.
“Since the outset, Fortescue has been at the forefront of innovation in the mining industry, underpinned by our value of generating ideas. It is this focus on technology and innovation that has driven our industry leading operational performance and cost position, said Elizabeth Gaines, Fortescue CEO. “The autonomous light vehicle project is a significant advancement of our in-house automation capability, building on our leading autonomous haulage system (AHS) program which has already delivered significant productivity and efficiency improvements for the business.”
Gaines added: “With the flexibility to introduce similar systems into other mobile assets, this project is fundamental to our future mobile equipment automation projects.”
Ford Australia President and CEO Andrew Birkic said: “We’re very proud that our award-winning Ford Rangers have been used as part of the Fortescue Metals Group autonomous light vehicle project. Ford globally is at the forefront of research into autonomous vehicles, and working with companies such as Fortescue is critical to gaining an insight into specific user applications.”