THE LEADER VOLUME 21 • NUMBER 9
An automation turning point
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Automation of mobile mining equipment has been growing rapidly, especially on surface. There is no question in the industry that this automation leads to higher productivity, less wear and tear, as well as higher safety levels. Miners with autonomous fleets will be succeeding with lower cost per tonne and less safety incidents and we will see more and more automated mobile equipment.
How is this translating to the underground mining domain? Underground conditions are more demanding in the sense that operating conditions are tighter, network connectivity is more challenging, and localisation in the GPS denied environment needs to work differently.
However, the benefits are even greater as well. In many places, it is becoming more difficult and expensive to find people that want to work underground, and automated equipment can be built smaller, promising less waste movement in development drifts and most importantly people entry into the underground mines can be reduced and consequently expensive ventilation can be reduced as well. Only the automation of mobile equipment will allow the vision of‘ Zero-Entry Mining’ to become a reality, providing significant benefits for productivity and safety. And finally, future mineral extraction is pushing underground, as surface deposits are being exhausted.
The key enabler to Zero-Entry-Mining is true autonomy of the mobile equipment fleet. Mobile equipment will need to be able to find its specific work based on guidance by mine management and execute all steps of the working task by itself without data connectivity. The availability of this true or full autonomy skill presents the turning point at which automated equipment will make underground mining operations more productive and safer.
Accelerated through newly, commonly available perception sensors and software architectures from physical AI developments in robotics and automotive industry, a team of ten automation developers, with jointly about 60 years of experience in the field, have achieved the technological breakthrough of successfully deploying fully autonomous mobile equipment in underground operations.
Use cases for haulage as well as loading operations have proven readiness for broader deployment. The autonomous loading equipment has robustly run through the performance test of 50 loading cycles delivering more than 500 t of material, without human assistance of any kind. No tele-remote assistance, not even cameras on the loader. In total, the loader has per 2026 delivered fully autonomously more than 13,000 t of material in more than 130 hours of operation, where also continuous operation for more than three hours in a row has been proven.
Also in the past months, an automated hauling use case has been established in a safety critical environment, where co-working with other vehicles and personnel under European safety standards is required. Multiple haulage vehicles need to be safely passing each other at specific passing points and the hauling equipment will warn, slow down, and stop when people or other objects show up in the path of the mobile equipment. European Safety Certification of the system will be completed shortly.
The Autonomous Operator System( AOS) of Nerospec SK can be retrofitted to any type of underground mobile equipment. This allows to upgrade any piece of existing mobile equipment by adding a few digital eyes and ears( sensors) and a processing brain and interface to the mobile equipment, basically sitting a virtual operator into the driver seat.
Four key enablers are making autonomy a success: First, Mining Autonomy is always a change project that requires passion, collaboration, experience, and adaptation to the specific customer use case. It requires a project relationship and is not a product sale.
Second, is the execution capability to deliver all elements required, from the functional design, safety concept, authority engagement, technical integration, autonomy algorithms, user interface design, in field validation and optimisation to customer handover.
Third, the unique Underground Positioning System( UPS) enables to position any mobile equipment reliably, also in very dusty dumping locations or close to working machines without depending on optical sensors.
Fourth, the unique advanced computing unit( cyberHUB) enables robust environment computing with standard robotic operating system frameworks.
All of these soft and hard capabilities have proven over the past years to be key to the success of achieving this transition point of bringing autonomy to underground mining mobile equipment. Last and most importantly all of this success and further development depends on the team of passionate mining autonomy people working at Nerospec SK and the AMTC institute at the Universidad de Chile.
The coming years will be very busy with broader rollout and further adaptations of the AOS to more use cases- 50 more mobile underground equipment units have been announced to take on the AOS to increase productivity. Further functionalities for loading broader varieties of material, loading and unloading bulk material, regular material reclaiming operations, will be developed and continuously improved to scale out of the box applicability of the AOS for more of the 100,000 underground working heavy equipment units around the globe.
Dr Eric Pohlmann CEO, Nerospec SK
International Mining | SEPTEMBER 2026 3