Roy Hill Mine Reaches Full Autonomous Conversion

All 78 haul trucks at Hancock Iron Ore’s Roy Hill mine in Australia have been converted from manual to fully driverless by Epiroc. The conversions use the company’s LinkOA system.

Epiroc and Hancock Iron Ore have been working to create a fully agnostic autonomous mine. Now, 78 haul trucks have been converted, and 60 of them are allocated to autonomous operation. The next step is to deploy the remaining trucks and finalize the mine’s ancillary vehicles’ communications capability.

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LinkOA is interoperable and scalable regardless of manufacturer. Ultimately, the mine’s autonomous fleet will comprise 54 Caterpillar 793F trucks and 24 Hitachi EH5000 trucks.

“Hancock Iron Ore is at the absolute forefront of mining automation, and we are happy to play a key role in their success,” said Helena Hedblom, Epiroc president/CEO, in a statement. “It’s very exciting to see the major progress done on this ground-breaking project, which represents a major step forward for autonomous mining globally.”

Stated Gerhard Veldsman, Hancock Iron Ore CEO:

“HIO was inspired by the work of our executive chairman, Dr. Gina Rinehart AO, and executive director Tad Watroba, who selected Epiroc to help lead autonomous mining haulage initially at Roy Hill. Interoperability opens productivity and safety benefits to many more, an outcome we can all be proud to have been part of.”

Hancock Iron Ore’s autonomous haul trucks are using Epiroc’s LinkOA traffic management and on-board automation systems to navigate the Roy Hill mine’s virtual map, communicating with ancillary vehicles and the remote operations center 1,100 km away in Perth. More than 250 million tonnes of material have been moved autonomously using LinkOA, according to Epiroc, and the trucks have safely travelled around 6 million kilometers, equivalent to going around the world more than 150 times.

With most of the 78 converted trucks already operating autonomously, the final phase—bringing all the trucks and ancillary vehicles online—is on track for completion by December 2025.