FLEET MANAGEMENT two things are happening – number one is we have stable and mature products in the market that our customers get a lot of value from, and trust. Then, secondly, the mining world is naturally starting to adopt these solutions at a much higher rate than before, whereas five to seven years ago, fatigue management and CAS were still seen as emerging technologies. CAS is probably the least saturated market but it is definitely in the main adoption phase now in mining, and at a number of sites today you cannot enter unless you are in one of the operation’ s vehicles that has CAS fitted.”
So, FMS, fatigue management and CAS all have clear paybacks in both productivity and safety. Kowalchuk states:“ We have been with the customers on the journey and they are getting good ROI. But inevitably it has meant more hardware and more sensors on their equipment, which they would like to reduce. And we are responding to that, and our first integrated solution will be coming out soon – so where the customer has all three solutions, there will be the removal of duplicate hardware.” Up until now these systems have been designed to be installed individually, where they wouldn’ t know if there was another system onboard. Customers can still opt for that, but now for new deployments or even existing ones, they can opt to declutter and Hexagon can reduce the sensors and hardware.“ We are testing this approach already at several sites to make sure everything is performing well and we are not introducing any bugs or instability issues. There are two ways that we are looking at the integration – first the hardware side and the mentioned decluttering of the cab and the equipment. This has other benefits like greater ease of install, as there is also less cabling to deal with. Many of Hexagon’ s customers are large mining groups and we work with them across multiple sites. Another trend here is that they want to reduce vendor complexity – they are investing in so much new technology which becomes harder and harder to manage, even though there are a lot of great individual vendors. But for these customers increasingly they want to consolidate a bit and often work with us as our product offering is so wide and mature. Plus many of our customers we work with long term – over decades – so they want a partner that can help future proof them to some extent as well.”
But the second aspect of integration concerns the data in the back end – where all the data can be held in a one stop shop location, so users can access all the data more easily but also potentially get enhanced insights and information from it once you overlay all the data together.“ We are addressing the data part in a few different ways – we are introducing a data platform where the customer can review all the data together; but then we are also introducing intelligent analytics to be able to correlate aspects of the data. For example, where the FMS is showing up inefficiencies, we can overlay that with fatigue events or CAS near misses. It could allow you to identify unusual speed events in a particular area that are impacting FMS productivity but before you were not able to understand why.”
The acqusition of indurad and xtonomy is helping Hexagon look at new approaches to autonomy and fleet management that are not reliant completely on centralised control and predefined routes
Overlaying the data on the same mine map can offer up a lot of insights into operator behaviour and performance as well as fuel efficiency. Hexagon will work with customers on a case by case basis and if there are common themes in terms of correlations that come up in the data at one site then it will be able to share that knowledge and insight with other sites as well. It also wants to empower customers to identify any additional insights that they might uncover.
The next big question is how FMS will continue to evolve with autonomy? For Hexagon, the acquisition of indurad and xtonomy in 2024 brought the opportunity to rethink how the whole ecosystem operates. Kowalchuk:“ Traditional FMS is based around centralised management of your fleet; but with more advanced sensors including radar, combined with onboard intelligence and edge computing – you start to be able to move away from that traditional model in that you now have a lot more smarts and intelligence on the machine itself. We have two trials currently ongoing where we are testing the ability of trucks to self-navigate using this technology so that they don’ t have to only rely on the operations centre to tell them what to do based on predefined routes and limits. These predefined routes might not be the most optimal given changes in field conditions such as weather changes, spilled rock, congestion, etc. as mines are constantly changing environments.”
Centralised control is based on a much more static understanding of the mine situation and with current autonomy systems
is very much reliant on pit patrollers to report back any changes so that the predefined routes can be adjusted centrally if needed.“ The challenge with autonomy and its operational efficiency is that you can solve 80 % of it really well but that remaining 20 % is often elusive. So, that is why we are trialling different technologies to better understand how we can unlock additional value from autonomy for the customer – we don’ t want to just offer yet another AHS that is doing the same thing as existing established offerings. We have a lot of capabilities and technologies in Hexagon, we just want to harness it in the right way and understand what is that future operating model between FMS and AHS, how do they interact and how can they unlock the most productivity, in particular how to increase utilisation and rate of those autonomous trucks and other machines.”
Hexagon has already proven the ability of autonomous trucks to operate 24 / 7 with extreme conditions such as fog with close to zero visibility, plus where there are difficult road conditions with heavy rain and potholes developing plus material appearing on the road from flooding.“ The truck can still make its way to the pit but with a traditional AHS, the haul route will need to be shut down until the road is cleared and graded and resurveyed before restarting. It is very promising to see that a truck is capable of self-navigating and doing it safely.”
Another discussion with Hexagon concerned the trend of smaller and midsized mines and in some cases contractors, not wanting the full traditional FMS with the cost and complexity that comes with that – instead seeking a lower entry cost, lighter version that still has most of the key FMS functionalities. Kowalchuk:“ Absolutely, we recognise that there is not just one type of FMS customer in mining. Mines come in many scales with different customer requirements. OP Pro, our FMS, is very well established in the market and has been around a long time. But to date, it is true we have largely been serving the larger, more complex mines that want and need a full featured solution – but clearly that comes with a cost. This investment, however, may not suit a smaller mine, one with a very simple operation, or one with a short mine life. Plus, the contractor model is growing in a lot of regions as well. Contractors want FMS benefits too but primarily just want to know material moved per day, plus equipment operating hours and efficiencies. They are also operating to a fixed term and the contract may not get renewed or end unexpectedly. So, when looking at other approaches to bringing FMS to market, we are looking at how we structure the pricing model and also how to make sure the product is fit for purpose for these other
International Mining | MAY 2025