Rio Tinto activated Komatsu's autonomous haulage system in Australia

Komatsu Ltd. (President and CEO: Kunio Noji) announced today that the FrontRunner® Autonomous Haulage System, supplied to Rio Tinto's West Angelas mine of East Pilbara Operation in Western Australia, has been activated into the trial operation.

This FrontRunner® system consists of the fleet with all Komatsu mining equipment such as 5 super large autonomous haul trucks with AC electric drive (930E-4AT), 1 super large hydraulic shovel (PC5500), 1 large mining dozer (D475A), 1 large wheel dozer (WD900) and 1 large motor grader (GD825). West Angelas mine is the second installation site of the FrontRunner®, as Komatsu has already supplied the first fleet to the copper mine of CODELCO in Chile.

The autonomous trucks navigate in the complex mining environment to haul a 290 metric tonne payload of overburden and ore without drivers, revolutionizing productivity and the way of mine operations, especially at mines where it is difficult to secure sufficient manpower because of their isolated location and severe environment.

Rio Tinto is paying close attention to the performance of this operation at West Angelas mine and plans to install the same system to another Rio Tinto�fs mines, if this system would operate successfully as they planned based on the analysis of the operation data.