A ‘significant milestone’ has been reached in the fully autonomous testing of trucks on mine sites, thanks to a tri-partite project between EACON Mining Technology, Thiess and Norton Gold Fields in Western Australia.
The advancement has seen test cycles undertaken without a safety driver of a retrofitted Komatsu HD1500 haul truck at the Mulgarrie open pit mine – part of Norton Gold Fields’ Paddington gold project.
The truck, named Jerry, is said to have had around 20,000 operating hours prior to being retrofitted as part of the project to increase asset life. Following a structured series of testing and validation activities, the truck met the criteria to operate fully autonomously – demonstrating the maturity of EACON’s complete autonomous driving system under Australian operating conditions.
Phase 1 of the project is said to have successfully validated performance, stability, and safety metrics of EACON’s autonomous driving system on a retrofit haul truck platform.
The phase demonstrated integration of EACON’s independently developed drive-by-wire retrofit kit, known as ORCASTRA, consistent and responsive vehicle behaviour under autonomous control, and effective tuning of control algorithms to match the truck’s native operating characteristics.
“EACON are proud to have reached this significant milestone, supported by the strong partnerships forged with Thiess and Norton Gold Fields,” EACON Mining Australia chief operating officer Elaine Jin said.
“Achieving this milestone safely and on schedule validates the maturity of our ORCASTRA system, its adaptability to the Australian mining environment and its proven performance on large scale rigid dump trucks.”
By enabling autonomy across multiple vehicle brands and models, EACON’s open, manufacturer-agnostic autonomy solution provides a practical pathway for upgrading existing mining fleets and facilitates the transition of autonomous haulage from greenfield deployments to scalable brownfield and retrofit operations.