U&M is a company that provides open pit mining services and large movements of soil and rock and, throughout its 45 years, has always sought the use of new technologies in its equipment and processes.

Given this and knowing that the technology of autonomous equipment was advancing at a rapid pace – both in urban vehicles, agriculture and even mining – we began, in 2017, to think of a way to have mining trucks outside our operations freestanding road signs.

The main motivation for using the autonomous truck is undoubtedly safety! The freelancer works in the rain, in the fog and at critical sleep times without any problem. Human skills will always be a great differential and possibly more advantageous in some cases of production, but the autonomous is a continuous, repetitive and extremely precise process where the estimated technical parameters become the real values, reproduced with great fidelity.

As U&M is a service provider and does not have its own operation, the start of the autonomous truck project was based on 3 important characteristics:

1) The autonomous truck would need to maintain its original cabin with all its controls (steering wheel, pedals, levers, display, …) available to remain a truck with an operator, through a “Manual / Autonomous” selector. This is because we may encounter situations where autonomous operation is not possible, due to technical or customer issues.

2) The autonomous truck could not require WiFi network or complex Radio Frequency communication systems, as this requires the installation and maintenance of towers and antennas in the customer’s areas, making the business model not very flexible.

3) As we operate in areas where there is interaction with equipment not managed by U&M (from the customer, other third parties, etc.), the autonomous truck should be able to work together with this equipment (autonomous or manned) and in any conditions of use. lanes and accesses (narrow, wide, etc.). With this, a very simple project was developed in terms of content, installation and applicability, which basically consists of reproducing all the actions that were performed by an operator. Therefore, to create an autonomous operation, a skilled and experienced operator just needs to operate the autonomous truck, for example, between the excavator to the tank and, from there, the operator can leave the truck and he will reproduce the entire route and speeds , in a manner identical to that performed by the operator. This is called “Mission”. The mission generators can be installed in any equipment, inside the autonomous truck itself, in another non-autonomous truck or even in a supervision truck.

Once the missions are generated, they are sent by the equipment that generated them and stored in the mine production control, known as “Dispatch”. It will always be the dispatch system (also developed by U&M) that will send the missions to the autonomous truck to carry out because, although autonomous, it only operates receiving orders from the dispatch. The operation of the autonomous truck is basically composed of a navigation system and an anti-collision protection system. The navigation system is responsible for following the mission created by the operator and it is he who activates the steering, brakes, gear, arrow and other commands. The route is created by points with GPS, but the driving is carried out by an inertial system with GPS monitoring and redundancy by RTK (ground base station with defined latitude, longitude and elevation). This set guarantees total coverage in mine conditions (pits, embankments, confined paths) and even in bad weather (presence of clouds or rain).

The anti-collision system consists of radar (electromagnetic wave), LiDar (pulsed laser beam) and Sonar (utrasound) sensors. The radar detects targets at long range, and takes the first deal, which is speed control. In the sequence, LiDar, with its cloud of laser points, forms an image, like a “scanner”, and then a new process begins, analyzing the possibilities of maneuver and diversion of the obstacle. As in some mine operations overtaking is prohibited, the dispatch may or may not enable the autonomous person to perform the overtaking maneuvers. If the truck arrives close to the obstacle, with already reduced speed and without the possibility of diversion, the third detection system, the sonar, will activate the emergency brakes.

In the event of any type of failure such as, for example, low tire pressure, loss of route, electrical or mechanical failure, active errors in the truck, etc … the brakes are applied and a message will be sent to the dispatch, requesting the presence responsible to verify what happened and provide a solution.

For the loading / unloading process, the self-employed person will always arrive at the loading / unloading / crusher and will be at a waiting point that does not hinder the flow of production. In the loading bay, for example, as soon as the excavator operator sets the time to load the autonomous operator, he activates a command on his panel, sending an authorization for the autonomous operator to maneuver to the excavator. This authorization includes the latitude / longitude / elevation of the excavator’s semi-arm, allowing the truck to stop at an appropriate loading point. The same occurs at the disposal site, awaiting the discharge authorization that will be sent, also with the geographic coordinates, by the tractor operator of the waste dump, the storage yard or even the crusher.

It is worth mentioning that all this technological content was developed at U&M, allowing processes and characteristics to be adjusted more quickly, according to the client and operation, so that technical assistance is quick, even in the most remote regions, as everyone involved in the project will be present.