EACON rigid truck AHS retrofitted & adapted in four months at Chinese coal mine

Autonomous haulage solution provider, EACON Mining Technology, has brought a new rigid dump truck platform into autonomous production at a coal mine in northern China, with a fleet of 90 t class TR100A rigid dump trucks from Inner Mongolia North Hauler Joint Stock Co Ltd (NHL) now operating autonomously without onboard safety drivers.

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Autonomous haulage solution provider, EACON Mining Technology, has brought a new rigid dump truck platform into autonomous production at a coal mine in northern China, with a fleet of 90 t class TR100A rigid dump trucks from Inner Mongolia North Hauler Joint Stock Co Ltd (NHL) now operating autonomously without onboard safety drivers.

The new vehicle platform adaptation for autonomous haulage was completed in approximately four months, and EACON states that production performance has been exceeding the mine operator’s expectations, with the trucks having the capability to support around-the-clock mine production.

The seven TR100A rigid dump trucks were retrofitted over the course of only three shifts, with the retrofit involving the installation of EACON’s autonomous haulage system, while the trucks’ drive-by-wire capability was supplied by the OEM.

As the TR100A was a new truck model for EACON’s autonomous haulage platform, the following month after the retrofit was dedicated to adapting and validating the system.

This included control validation and autonomous haulage system safety validation.

The trucks then completed approximately three months of full-cycle testing under normal production conditions, with safety drivers onboard.

This testing provided an opportunity to validate autonomous operation across the mine’s production cycle and operating conditions before progressing to driverless operation.

In total, the entire vehicle platform adaptation for the new truck model took only four months.

The mine operator took a phased approach to the transition, aligning autonomous fleet deployment with production requirements and the availability of loading equipment.

Following successful testing, safety drivers were removed from these trucks at the end of August, with autonomous operations initially conducted during the day shift before expanding to around-the-clock operation at the end of September.

The operating environment has the potential to include mixed traffic of autonomous haul trucks sharing roads with manned vehicles.

Loaded trucks also travel uphill between the loading area and crusher, while seasonal conditions range from snow and ice in winter to muddy roads during periods of thaw and rainfall.