An Autonomous future driven by safety

At the Hexagon Live event in Las Vegas, Peter Haddock met with Josh Weiss, the Chief Operating Officer at Hexagon Geosystems, the parent company for Leica Geosystems. 

Josh first joined the sector doing a summer job in the mining industry in Australia, where two fatalities occurred on a single mine site. It was a defining period in his life that has seen his career to date spent making the mining and construction sectors safer and more productive. 

Josh: "I saw the devastating impact those fatalities had on the families, employees and local community. It certainly changed my life and set me on a course to work in the mining and construction sectors with the goal of making them a safer place. Even in the US today, 20% of all workplace fatalities occur on construction sites. 

"But thankfully, we now have the technology and a zero harm roadmap that can make tasks safer and, in some cases, fully automate them to take individuals out of harm's way. And enhancing safety in this way actually creates a more productive and efficient workforce or site. We already have the data across our product and solution portfolio to prove this. 

"And even if an individual is not harmed, the financial impact of a metal on metal accident alone has risen exponentially, with downtime, the cost repairs and replacement units all adding to project losses." 

When Peter spoke to Josh, he was standing next to a picture of the company's first fully autonomous road train. It's a project in Western Australia where Hexagon has partnered with mining services specialist Mineral Resources Limited. 

Josh: "This project is the classic example of how our drive-by-wire technology can link with an autonomous management system to orchestrate vehicle movement. In this case, we are able to deliver a safe, scalable and sustainable solution that can unlock resources in hard to reach locations across Pilbara in Western Australia.

"In practical terms, we have enabled a convoy consisting of three prime mover trucks, each towing three trailers, to travel up to 120km along a specially made private haulage road. 

"Each journey delivers 900 tonnes of iron ore from the pit to a new processing hub near the port town of Onslow. Due to be complete in 2023, when up and running, the Ashburton facility will process 300 million tonnes of iron ore per year. At that point, thanks to the project's success, it will be fed by multiple autonomous convoys consisting of up to five prime mover trucks.

“By making this process fully autonomous, we have removed the monotonous nature of this kind of work, eliminating the safety risks associated with driver fatigue while allowing for 24-hour operation. 

“This solution also enables our customer to seamlessly service a variety of satellite pits that can shift over time. It's an approach that gives them the potential to unlock deposits that would previously have been considered economically unviable using a more traditional fixed rail transport model. 

"It also reduces the cost of fuel maintenance and increases the equipment lifecycle as there is no 'heavy foot' acceleration or braking. So, lowering overall costs and risk in this way could create new jobs in the global mining sector."

Where mining leads, other sectors follow, and this is where the growth of autonomous solutions will be even more important. Josh: "Autonomy is not just about big machines. It's also about how we automate a task and remove stresses from the whole construction or mining process. 

"For example, we have successfully achieved semi-autonomous excavator operation, and we can now collect data for construction projects using autonomous reality capture devices. By mounting these devices onto drones and robots like the Boston Dynamics Spot, the dog, we can scan large or dangerous areas collecting extremely accurate data.

“But data collection is only worthwhile if you can turn it into useful information. And that's why I firmly believe in interoperability and connecting an open ecosystem through developing industry standards that everyone can work too. 

“If we can agree on regional and ultimately global standards, we can seamlessly introduce new technologies that can safely automate numerous processes. A good example of this is how we have collaborated with other technology providers like Xwatch Safety Solutions to bring active technologies into existing in-cab screens, like our personal alert wearable devices. 

This integration can alert site operatives and plant operators, slowing down or even stopping machines without adding to cab clutter. Similarly, our latest operator alertness systems don't just measure microsleeps. They can now pick up distraction related events, and we have even recently developed a specific mobile phone module. But it's important that all of these technologies including solutions like collision avoidance technology, are designed to work autonomously but together. 

This way, we can learn how to automate tasks and add in solutions that will help us progress down the road safely, application by application, to a semi autonomous and, ultimately, where possible, a fully autonomous future.