DESIGN NOTES
Edited by Ken Korane • Contributing Editor
Komatsu’s 400-ton capacity 980E-4 mining truck is a workhorse in autonomous hauling operations.
Hydraulics lets driverless trucks move 2 billion tons Global heavy equipment manufacturer Komatsu America Corp., Rolling Meadows, Ill., announced that its FrontRunner Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) has achieved the unprecedented milestone of more than two billion tons of surface material moved in driveless operation. According to company officials, the FrontRunner system has now hauled more than all other commercial mining autonomous haulage systems combined. Since its first commercial deployment in 2008 at CODELCO’s Gabriela Mistral (Gaby) copper mine in Chile, the FrontRunner AHS has experienced exponential growth in cumulative production, breaking the one billion tons mark in 2016 and the 1.5 billion tons mark in late 2017. This has been accomplished with more than 130 trucks in operation to date. An additional 150 trucks will deploy to the Canadian oil sands over the next seven years.
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12 • 2018
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12/14/18 2:45 PM
