No vision of mining's autonomous future can be fully realized without the technology to manage your fleet and equipment.
Hexagon's autonomous mission management system is the beating heart of this vision, and the key to advancing the next generation of mine automation. Launched in partnership with Liebherr at last year's MINExpo in Las Vegas, NV, the autonomous mission management system - or mission manager, for short - orchestrates autonomous fleet and unmanned mine traffic movements throughout the mine for optimized autonomous haulage.
Itis fully integrated with Hexagon's fleet management and enterprise analytics and reporting portfolio products. The mission manager will be used in the mine automation options offered by Liebherr to customers.
A high level of safety, flexibility and seamless integration are the hallmarks of Liebherr's offerings, which include its complete autonomous haulage solution. The partnership embodies both companies' vision of open architecture, next generation mine automation.
The one-platform approach to integrating multiple life-of-mine solutions empowers mines pursuing an autonomous future. Hexagon, a global leader in digital reality solutions, calls this the Power of One- a holistic, life-of-mine smart solution connecting sensors and software, infield apps and cloudware to empower digital transformation.
For the first time, one technology partner connects the mine to the boardroom via a single onboard ecosystem comprising a smart computer, antenna and display. Fleet management is now addressed by a scalable, platform-agnostic answer to challenges previously addressed by point solutions and multiple vendors. Winning the 2021 Mining Magazine Fleet and Equipment Award not only validates a lot of hard work but also continues a proud tradition, said Andrew Crose, VP-Autonomous of Hexagon's Mining division.
"The Mining Magazine awards celebrate excellence and a commitment to advancing the state of play in mining, so this is great recognition for our autonomous development team and its continued commitment to quality," said Crose.
"This marks the second award won by Hexagon's autonomous portfolio in four years, which is quite an achievement." Hexagon's vehicle intervention system (VIS) was launched in 2017 to detect and prevent collisions by automatically slowing down or even stopping a haul truck if an imminent collision is detected.
It won Mining Magazine's Safety Award the same year. VIS has since been deployed on three continents, in 10 mines and almost 500 haul trucks with more than two million operational hours. "For mission manager, we followed the strategy that made the vehicle intervention system a success," said Crose.
"This meant being OEM-independent but working directly with OEMs like Liebherr to develop the system, listening to customers to innovate beyond the legacy state of the art that existed, and building towards ISO and other standards with our OEM and customer partners to ensure a more future-proofed solution. "Usability, scalability, state of the art and next-generation technologies - all of this helped to deliver a solution worthy of 2021 Mining Magazine Fleet and Equipment Award. And that makes all of us at Hexagon very proud."
