FLEET AUTOMATION
Komatsu’s Innovative Autonomous
Haulage Vehicle (IAHV), just one part
of its AHS future development
program
although current industry standardisation and
adoption remains rather poor, it is slowly gaining
ground over the former DSRC standards. “The
varying regulatory landscape around the globe
creates barriers to a ‘one-product-fits-all’ approach
and creates differentials in product features and
functions that make global adoption difficult. The
trend toward future automation technologies of
more than just vehicles makes this particular
functionality increasingly critical as time moves
on, and Komatsu hopes to see better technology
standardisation and protocols entering the V2X
landscape to help lower the barriers to wider
adoption of this technology to the benefit of the
mining and metals markets.”
Another big question is whether AHS is
changing truck size
class demand towards
smaller trucks.
Komatsu says it is
continually evaluating
the market and will
always be responsive to
demand. That being
said, regarding the
future demand for new
(autonomous-ready) or
AHS retrofits, in general
it finds that there is a
greater percentage of
customers looking to
take advantage of the latest technological
advances including those found in new trucks,
“and there does anecdotally appear to be a skew
toward larger payload trucks such as the 930E and
980E. Interest has been expressed in varying
degrees for autonomous trucks in the 100-200 ton
class but that demand isn’t yet at the levels we
see for autonomous trucks in the 250-400 ton
class.”
LTE has been a fundamental game-changer in
reliability for mining communications networks,
and Komatsu highlighted cases where average
communication losses have been reduced in some
cases from roughly 4% to many orders of
magnitude lower. “The result of this increased
reliability of the communications network has
correlated to successes in productivity gains and
reduced machine stoppages due to outages in
mine communications networks. As additional LTE
bands continue to become available for private
industry, and as public-private LTE partnerships
continue to grow, this will foster greater up time
and reliability in machine automation across the
board. While LTE will never completely supplant
802.11 Wi-Fi in mining, it compliments 802.11 well,
and provides strengths where mines have
historically had great challenges in reliability. As
such, Komatsu is committed to following the path
laid out by 3GPP in LTE and beyond to enhance its
machine automation capabilities.”
Komatsu’s FrontRunner AHS now operates on
converged Cisco outdoor mesh networks, meaning
that it no longer requires a dedicated Wi-Fi network
and is also the first to achieve full production
operation on 4G LTE. Over time, additional wireless
technologies and protocols will be qualified. “We
do work to be as accommodating as we can,
though safety and system integrity and availability
remain the paramount concerns. This is why
Komatsu hasn’t yet allowed customers to ‘bring
your own radio’ despite many customers having
asked for that flexibility.”
On FMS, the company says the success of
Komatsu’s FrontRunner AHS relates directly to its
tight integration with the class-leading DISPATCH
FMS which is supplied by Komatsu-owned
Modular Mining. “At this time and for the
Projects
that hold water
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