EACON Mining Technology proudly announces a significant milestone. As an Autonomous Haulage Solution pioneer, EACON is operating the world’s largest fleet of autonomous mine trucks within a single mine, totaling 203 vehicles.
This impressive fleet now constitutes nearly 40% of the total truck fleet at the mine. This achievement underscores the robust capabilities of EACON’s AHS solution in managing large-scale fleets within a single mine.
In a remarkable feat for energy efficiency and emissions reduction, these new energy mining trucks, featuring hybrid electric design, collectively reduce carbon emissions by nearly 16,000 tons annually.
Furthermore, EACON’s operational prowess shines, with these autonomous trucks operating for over 21 hours in a single day, which is 2 hours more than the average length of traditional manned driving operation. Currently, the EACON’s Autonomous Haulage System (AHS) boasts a staggering 100% productivity, and consistently outperforming manual operations.
Operating such a large-scale fleet of autonomous vehicles presents numerous challenges for conventional solutions, including multi-vehicle coordination in high-traffic density scenarios and dependence on network bandwidth. EACON’s next-generation autonomous driving solution addresses this issue through innovative technology and systematic design. In EACON’s system, the control centre server is dedicated solely to dispatching and map management, while the vehicles are equipped with an advanced and reliable perception system, enabling intelligent decision-making and precise path planning autonomously. This not only significantly reduces reliance on the network but also enhances adaptability to various scenarios.
The system empowers controllers with real-time 3D visualization, allowing them to monitor the entire operation comprehensively. On the interactive 3D maps, controllers can track the status of mobile equipment, berms, roads, loading/dumping areas, and more. Additionally, the system can also provide real-time statistical data and on-board monitoring videos.
EACON’s next-generation autonomous driving system adopts a distributed architecture. As an intelligent device, the truck is capable of handling multiple driving-related tasks independently. This includes perception, path planning, decision-making (such as parking, detouring, and slowing down during driving), and multi-truck coordination at intersections. These tasks are executed by the trucks through onboard high-performance computers (edge computer) and V2V communication technology.
EACON sets itself apart with its OEM-agnostic and power-agnostic retrofit plan, offering not only factory-installed autonomous solutions but also the adaptability to retrofit their high-quality AHS solutions onto any mining truck, regardless of truck model and power configuration.