Eacon Mining’s autonomous fleet solution has been making waves overseas, and now it’s bound for Australia.
According to a recent Mining and Energy Union audit, there have been 54 serious incidents across Queensland coal mines since the start of the year. The majority involved vehicles.
The report detailed multiple instances of collisions and unintentional movements of heavy vehicles – these are hazardous, and sometimes deadly, accidents. And it’s usually the vehicle operators who experience the worst of it.
But a tech start-up from Beijing, Eacon Mining, is looking to change that.
Eacon specialises in scalable, autonomous driving solutions for the mining and quarry industries. The company designs software and algorithms for autonomous driving and is able to retrofit its technology into a range of different truck models from different manufacturers.
In other words, Eacon takes ordinary mining trucks and transforms them into intelligent and autonomous machines. The company is looking to bring its technology to Australian shores, from the comfort of its soon-to-open Perth office.
Eacon Mining director of overseas strategy Elaine Jin sat down with Australian Mining to explain how the company’s offering works.
“Our solution is very flexible. It fits a range of trucks and is able to adapt to various working environments,” she said.
“In China, Eacon designs the drive-by-wire system, and the original equipment manufacturers help to install all the hardware. Eacon’s autonomous technology has been fitted to mining trucks ranging from 45 to 90 tonnes.
“But for the Australian market, Eacon is looking to retrofit even larger trucks with the autonomous technology. To accomplish this, Eacon has vehicle engineering team members who have industry experience retrofitting more than 200 mining trucks with drive-by-wire technology.”
Autonomous fleets can help shoulder most – sometimes all – of the burden when it comes to mine loading, haulage and dumping. Eacon’s autonomous systems can run for many hours without the need for operator rest.
Autonomous truck technology in general is something that’s already taken off in the Australian resources sector. But it can be costly.
Eacon aims to remedy this issue by providing a more affordable autonomous solution to the Australian mining industry. With Eacon, small- and medium-sized miners – not just the big players – can get their hands on this technology and start optimising operations.
Eacon’s latest project is the Fushan quarry in China.
“In February, 20 autonomous trucks were delivered to the site and, after only two months of commissioning, we started multi-fleet unmanned operations without safety drivers on-board,” Jin said.
“Autonomous driving has helped the mine achieve stable production during both day and night shifts.”
At Fushan, Eacon used its autonomous factory-installed battery-electric trucks, which helped the operation significantly cut its Scope 1 carbon emissions. Eacon currently offers autonomous system retrofitting to the Australian market, but it has plans to bring its ready-built electric trucks to our shores.
Eacon is also operating in two large-scale open-pit coal mines in China.
“These autonomous haulage projects have been in operation for nearly three years,” Jin said.
“So far, we have deployed 14 and 39 autonomous trucks to those sites, respectively. In three years of operation, we achieved a 68 to 80 per cent labour cost reduction, a five to eight per cent increase in productivity, and zero incidents.”
So what makes Eacon’s autonomous truck solution such a success?
It’s a combination of flexibility, deep-learning algorithm and innovative safety functions.
“We use deep-learning technology to achieve accurate recognition of traffic conditions,” Jin said.
“Our system can identify hard-to-spot hazards such as small falling rocks and potholes, and the vehicle can decide whether to go over or bypass them.
“And thanks to the intelligent on-board planning, the trucks are able to work in certain blind areas and during short disconnections from Wi-Fi or LTE (long-term evolution) networks.”
The crowdsource mapping system means each truck can update the mine map in real-time without human or cloud intervention. This allows the whole fleet to run smoothly, avoiding operational delays.
“The entire process is completely automatic, eliminating the need for manual mapping and data collection, which greatly improves safety and enhances operational efficiency,” Jin said.
Also unique to Eacon is its remote driving function.
“When some failures occur on the truck side, the truck will perform a safety stop,” Jin said. “After that, the system will determine whether remote driving takeover is needed and can pass control over to an operator in the control room.”
Eacon’s autonomous solution package also includes collaborative working suites for other on-site mobile equipment such as excavators, light vehicles and water trucks, as well as dynamic dispatch technology to efficiently manage fleets.
By removing workers from the frontline, autonomous technology is playing a major role in making mining operations safer.
“Autonomous driving eliminates the risk of personal injury by reducing the on-site drivers,” Jin said.
“Human drivers have individual driving habits and skill levels – they may also suffer from fatigue. But autonomous driving strictly follows rules.
“This guarantees safety and consistency in performance. For example, our self-driving mining trucks must comply with defined right-of-way rules at crossroads, and they will not enter restricted areas.
“Our autonomous driving system also takes safety design to the highest level, ensuring safe operation through intelligent fault diagnosis and different levels of handling strategies.”
With its intelligent, scalable approach to innovation, Eacon is helping smaller miners keep pace with the industry leaders.
This feature appeared in the August 2023 issue of Australian Mining.
