Fortescue Metals Group has deployed autonomous light vehicles (ALVs) at the company’s mining operations in the Chichester Hub, Western Australia.
Developed by Fortescue’s Technology and Autonomy team as a solution to improve the efficiency of its Christmas Creek mobile maintenance team, ALVs remove the need for fitters to make around 12,000 28-kilometre round trips annually to collect equipment and parts.
With the assistance of Ford Australia, four Ford Rangers have been retrofitted with an on-board vehicle automation system to support the driverless equipment transfer service, which will improve efficiency and safety by enabling team members to spend more time on maintaining assets.
The system features an integrated Lidar/Radar perception system that facilitates obstacle detection and dynamic obstacle avoidance, a comprehensive independent safety management and fail-safe braking system and extensive built-in system monitoring and fault response capability.
The successful deployment of ALV’s will provide the opportunity to implement a similar system at Fortescue’s other operational sites to improve safety, productivity and efficiency.
Fortescue’s Chief Executive Officer, Elizabeth Gaines, said the ALV project is a significant advancement of the company’s automation capability, building on the autonomous haulage system (AHS) program which has delivered significant productivity and efficiency improvements for the business.
“With the flexibility to introduce similar systems into other mobile assets, this project is fundamental to our future mobile equipment automation projects,” she said.
