Giants run on autopilot

Remote-controlled BELAZ trucks have already reached the speed of a mining dump truck with a driver. Improvement of the smart vehicle continues.

Without exaggeration, the Intelligent Quarry project can be named the most technological novelty in the country in the last year. In the middle of 2021, the President was presented with the technologies of crushed stone mining and unmanned operation of domestic mining transport at the Sitnitskoye deposit of Granit RUPE in the Luninets District: 90-tonne BELAZ-7558R dump trucks independently transported tens of tons of rock thanks to artificial intelligence and the fifth-generation mobile communications. It is expected that in the near future, domestic development will change the paradigm of work in quarries, reduce the mining costs and even let reach places where mining was previously considered unprofitable.

A project with billions of dollars’ potential

Autonomous projects with the participation of mining dump trucks and without the participation of drivers are a fairly new direction in the development of industrial engineering. However, such eminent giants as Caterpillar, Komatsu and Scania have already actively entered the competition. Each of them managed to release its own robotic complex that currently, despite the fact that it is under development, practically does not need people in its work. Of course, there is no talk of complete independence, but the projects are not so far from it.
In our country, machine-building companies are also actively entering the era of artificial intelligence competition. The Intelligent Quarry project for the use of unmanned mining dump trucks at the Sitnitskoye deposit in the Luninets District has been implemented for a long time. This joint development of BELAZ OJSC — Management Company of BELAZ-HOLDING, Granit RUPE and Belarusian Cloud Technologies JLLC is truly unique. It is a technically challenging and ambitious project that is already demonstrating excellent results.
Thanks to a combination of software, the genius of Belarusian engineers and fifth-generation mobile communications, the unmanned BELAZ-7558R mining dump truck can independently move and unload the rock mass. With no driver, the vehicle travels uphill well and turns quite smoothly. Therefore, it is possible to significantly reduce the travel time, and, as is known, time is money. 3D LiDAR sensors, LEDDAR sensors and radars help the truck be accurate — they analyse the space around the vehicle and the distance to objects. The truck also has a GPS module with an accuracy of about two centimetres. Head of the Department of Intelligent Quarry Management Systems Dmitry Yeliseyev comments that last year, the unmanned mining dump trucks were actively tested with drivers: it was necessary to understand how efficiently the complex works with a person in order to later compare it with the autonomous mode. At the same time, they managed to reach the speed of a truck with a driver in autonomous mode, and now they are actively preparing to overcome it.
“When working on the project, we set up the optimal modes of the brake systems of mining dump trucks and loaders that work with them. At present, comparative tests of manned and unmanned mining technologies are being carried out, optimal operating modes have been formed, travels to form ‘reference’ ones have been traced,” said Dmitry Yeliseyev.

Debugging of the complexcontinues

Also, according to him, BELAZ OJSC — Management Company of BELAZ-HOLDING has developed a programme for testing the complex in manned and unmanned mining technologies. “The initial debugging of the unmanned mining technology made it possible to identify the need to improve the 7825D loader drive software to adapt it to soil conditions. We tested eight operation algorithms. Now, traction in loose soils has improved significantly.”
In addition, during the project implementation period, a large amount of information was transmitted from the on-board devices of the two mining dump trucks for further processing and analysis on the company’s servers using an intelligent mining transport monitoring system.
“Based on these data, multifactorial mathematical models of typical states of dump transport have been developed — filling, loading, movement with load and movement without load. The technical condition is constantly monitored. Together with the testing of robotic equipment, pilot operation of a module to detect anomalies in the data stream is underway. This module will be the basis for a predictive analytics module to start the transition from scheduled maintenance to on-demand maintenance.”


Dmitry Yeliseyev explained that, based on data from various sensors, such as 3D LiDAR sensors, LEDDAR sensors and radars, work has been done to improve the detection of obstacles along the route of robotic vehicles.
“Currently, the debugging of the software continues,” the Head of the Department of Intelligent Quarry Management Systems concluded.

Based on materials of sb.by
Photos by BELTA and Aleksei Vyazmitinov