Case Study – Komatsu
TECHNOLOGY
Case Study – Komatsu
Komatsu announced the mining industry ’ s first Autonomous Haulage System ( AHS ) running on Nokia Industrial-grade Private Wireless technology in January 2019 . This is enabling ultra-high system availability and reliability across Komatsu ’ s commercial operations while upholding the company ’ s renowned safety standards . Today , more than half of Komatsu ’ s production sites in North America , Latin America and Australia are running on Nokia 4.9G / LTE .
Komatsu ’ s FrontRunner AHS allows uncrewed operation of the ultra-class mining trucks that are critical to the mining industry . These autonomous haul trucks are centrally controlled through a wireless network . This integrates onboard vehicle controllers , highprecision global positioning , and obstacle detection and avoidance systems . The system uses full supervisory logic , harnessing complex data fusion to control the dump truck to safely operate through a load , haul and dump cycle . It also allows integration with other mining vehicles such as light vehicles , dozers , loaders and graders .
Komatsu ’ s FrontRunner AHS brings together the world ’ s best-selling , ultra-class dump trucks with Modular Mining Systems ’ DISPATCH Fleet Management System . This is the preferred management system in 90 % of the largest mining operations in the world . Komatsu ’ s FrontRunner AHS has experienced exponential growth in cumulative production since its first commercial deployment in 2008 at Codelco ’ s Gabriela Mistral copper mine in Chile . It has moved more than 3 billion tons to this date . A Komatsu study revealed that transitioning to private LTE at a production customer site reduced communication errors per truck operating hour by 84.6 %. This resulted in a productivity increase of 8.5 %, up to 250,000 tonnes per year .
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