CAS & FATIGUE
Tanzer, Global Commercial Director for Wabtec Digital Mine:“ 2025 has mainly been about consolidating all the functionalities and capabilities into a contained and established product. We had been on one of the steepest product development curves in the CAS industry, that is now stabilising from a software functionality perspective.”
A big part of this is a new back office software solution – this used to be called CAS Web but is now just referred to as the Portal. Part of it is still hosted on the customer’ s infrastructure but the majority is now a cloud hosted platform in terms of the reporting and the power of the data and data analysis.“ We’ ve got some great feedback, and it’ s really elevated our reporting to another level. We’ ve always been good at collecting data, but that’ s not good enough- our customers want information and insights, we are now giving them that to a much greater degree. A great example is our new investigation module that we’ ve built into the Portal, which includes all the functionality around what happens when there’ s an incident. It gives customers a really efficient way to dive into an incident and diagnose what’ s happened very quickly and very accurately, users are able close the loop.”
Another aspect not often talked about with CAS Level 9 is the slow down or stop vehicle intervention system health, as it’ s necessary to ensure the system operates correctly. The Portal health module is comprehensive and user friendly. Users can use it to figure out exactly what needs to be rectified across the fleet in terms of CAS. This ensures the system consistently operates at maximum health. Real-time system health monitoring & reporting of critical CAS safety functions( GNSS, V2V, ToF RF and more) means Wabtec’ s Gen 3 CAS allows‘ fail to safe operation’ as operators will be notified as soon as critical failures are identified. Any issues are also logged in the Portal at real-time allowing maintenance personnel to support a quick‘ go / no-go decision’ for the CAS operation.
Other Portal capabilities include mine interaction hotspots, live vehicle position information, historical journey replays for incident analysis, and rich geofence management capabilities for scenario management across vehicle types. It can report on demand or by schedule plus allows wireless CAS software and configuration updates to ensure optimal operation.
Wabtec, like some of the other major players in the CAS space, has recently expanded its portfolio to include a fatigue monitoring solution; and at the same time it has added AI smart cameras to the mix. This is indicative of a move to be able to offer a comprehensive platform that combines advanced sensor technology & stereoscopic
3D vision technology for situational awareness, proximity detection and collision avoidance via smart and intelligent machines that have a core focus on safety.
Tanzer told IM:“ These additions are quite recent, so we are currently going through an integration process, with the initial priority to offer an integrated CAS and fatigue management solution. Both can stand alone but in terms of incident and data insights, to also have a combined offering is important for us – as it opens up some new potential customer opportunities.”
He added:“ Although fatigue and collision are sometimes not related, they can be. So I think it’ s important to be able to bring all data points together in a unified platform that enables customers to make decisions about what they want to do and or how they manage the risk. It’ s a commercial priority as customers are expecting to have unification of their safety platforms.”
On the smart cameras Tanzer states:“ There are also some specific safety related scenarios where CAS isn’ t as effective as it is in the load and haul space. In Queensland and in WA, we’ ve seen a number of dozer or excavator rollovers where they’ ve encroached too close to a waste dump or bench edge. There’ s been a lot of focus from the regulator, particularly in Australia, around resolving that and our AI smart camera portfolio has the ability to detect edges, voids and roll angles. That’ s one use case that this portfolio expansion will help us with.”
Tanzer said that prior to the portfolio expansion, Wabtec had already been testing AI smart cameras in a proof of concept phase for the last two years with a lot of success. Now, with the cameras being part of the Wabtec offering, it is accelerating full rollouts in Australia.“ Actually, smart cameras are already extensively used in South Africa, especially in platinum mining in the Rustenberg area. There’ s been a lot of success where they’ ve been using the camera as a proximity detection solution and have passed some of the University of Pretoria tests. The AI smart cameras offer an alternative pathway to proximity detection and collision avoidance. Stereoscopic 3D cameras have some pros, but also some cons. But it’ s also possible to have Gen 3 CAS and the AI smart cameras working in unison, that is the ultimate solution for now.”
On Wabtec’ s CAS being used underground, Tanzer argues that while it would work in a functional sense, from an interaction and vehicle point of view, the two applications are completely different.“ All of the logic on our CAS is based around surface interactions such a loading zones and T intersections, which is vastly different to an underground mining context. Then the size and layout of the machines is entirely different as well. So our view is that each market needs its own system, even though the sensing technology might be the same or similar.”
Finally, there are certain additional functionalities Wabtec is looking to add to its CAS. One area of focus is to better support loading areas with spotting assist. Another is being able to do some pre-start inspections without paper. Tanzer:“ We have also worked on making our CAS transferable from one fleet to another. Because we’ ve got some installations, particularly in Queensland and NSW, where we have multiple mines in very close proximity, we’ ve now made our CAS transferable so the kits can be coded and moved from site to site to site. That’ s good for contractors who might be moving machines to other sites every few years, as this means they don’ t have to invest in a lot of new hardware.”
LoopX looks to the future of mining with operational intelligence
Canada-based LoopX delivers advanced collision avoidance, situational awareness, and productivity analytics solutions including the LoadSight system through its Intelligent Mining Operation Platform – which it describes as“ a unified physical AI platform that transforms traditional mining operations into intelligent, connected systems, empowering operators with operational intelligence to advance toward safe, smart, and autonomous mining in collaboration with leading global mining companies and partners.”
A major focused has been on Level 7 CAS for underground, with a number of systems deployed. Some of them already had legacy Level 7 CAS in place – mainly RF based from various providers – and LoopX CEO Chao Yu says have shared a lot of issues they have had with these solutions.“ These are mainly too many false alarms plus a lack of precision – they are just alerting you to the presence of another machine or person and the distance without directional detail and precise location therefore moving to Level 8, where you can give those exact details plus an advisory, is not possible.”
In addition, there may be a requirement for multiple antennas on the machine and in some cases the requirement to have a cap lamp tag as well.“ I would also say that many clients want to also gradually upgrade their systems to Level 9 capability – and of course that is not possible because the Level 7 RF-based system already installed is not capable of slowing down or stopping the machine. We have designed our Level 7 system so it is possible to take a phased approach and ultimately even achieve an autonomous machine.”
68 International Mining | JANUARY 2026