The quarrying sector is fast catching up with mining in the autonomous haulage space – and if anything moving ahead in the electrification space given the ability to use smaller class equipment with less punishing duty cycles. On AHS, Heidelberg Materials this week said it was accelerating its global rollout of autonomous heavy mobile equipment.
It stated: “Working closely with established technology partners, the company is advancing from a lighthouse project to a broader rollout across six sites and two vehicle types in North America, Australia, and Europe.” Heidelberg Materials plans to deploy around 30 autonomous vehicles as part of the expansion phase in 2026. The ramp-up builds on the successful deployment of an AHS at its Lake Bridgeport quarry in Texas, USA.
While the partners were not named, Applied Intuition, Pronto and sensmore all made their own separate statements in relation to their respective projects – while IM understands that Epiroc is also in the mix with its LinkOA autonomy platform. What is interesting is that Heidelberg is keeping its options open, working with four different companies and systems across different machine types and regions. This will provide a unique opportunity to make comparisons based on results from varying technologies at distinct quarry operations. The rest of the quarrying world – and the mining world – will be watching with interest.
First up Applied Intuition – it is to deploy autonomous haulage systems for Heidelberg Materials’ quarry operations, starting in Clarence Sands, New South Wales Australia. It adds it will provide its Self-Driving System (SDS) for Construction “to support autonomous haulage operations within Heidelberg Materials’ fleet of construction and mining vehicles in Australia.” Applied Intuition’s system runs directly on the vehicle, with integrated perception, decision-making and safety systems onboard.
Epiroc is thought to also have a partnership in place – involving another as yet unnamed Heidelberg quarry in Western Australia – to deploy its LinkOA platform, though this has not yet been officially announced. LinkOA is already well known in Australia for having been once of the few OEM agnostic AHS globally to have been successfully deployed at a large mining operation – specifically at the Roy Hill mine, operated by Hancock Iron Ore. In January it reached a significant milestone with more than 300 Mt of material having been moved autonomously using LinkOA deployed on 54 Caterpillar 793F trucks, 24 Hitachi EH5000 trucks and 18 Hitachi EH4000 trucks.
Moving to North America, Pronto, the Silicon Valley pioneer in AI-first autonomous haulage and the core technology engine of Atoms Mining, is to expand its AHS deployments to two additional Heidelberg Materials sites. The deployment schedule follows the already mentioned successful pilot project and operational integration of the technology at Heidelberg Materials’ Lake Bridgeport, Texas quarry, which Pronto says validated the scalability, safety, and operational efficiency of its autonomy platform. Over an eight-month period, Pronto AHS safely and autonomously transported more than two million tons of limestone. This operation also represented North America’s first fully autonomous mixed-fleet quarry. By seamlessly integrating disparate equipment brands – including Caterpillar 775G and Komatsu HD605 series trucks – onto a single AHS. The new rollout schedule targets the state-of-the-art Mitchell, Indiana facility and the high-volume Servtex, Texas quarry.
Finally, sensmore is partnering with Heidelberg to automate wheel loader operations at an unnamed sand and gravel extraction site in northern Germany. It stated: “The partnership brings sensmore’s full automation system and Physical AI to one of the most important machine categories in raw material extraction. sensmore equips wheel loaders with its complete automation technology and vertically integrates them into the extraction process — from the machine and functional safety infrastructure to the network and operational interfaces required for real production environments.”
At Heidelberg Materials, sensmore is automating a high-volume material extraction process. At this scale, it says automation creates the foundation for the next generation of material extraction: more consistent output, higher machine utilisation, and safer, healthier daily site operations. “This partnership aims to support the gradual introduction of automated material extraction in Europe,” said Maximilian Rolf, CEO and Co-Founder of sensmore.
In its own statement, Heidelberg Materials said: “Designed to be integrated into existing fleets, the technology used across Heidelberg Materials’ autonomous projects provides a scalable and cost‑efficient way to accelerate the modernisation of heavy mobile equipment. The systems leverage advanced sensors, cameras, and artificial intelligence to autonomously operate haul trucks and other mobile equipment in complex, dynamic environments.”
“Advancing automation and AI applications is a key pillar of our technical excellence agenda as we look to constantly raise the bar for our processes and equipment,” said Axel Conrads, Chief Technical Officer and Member of the Managing Board of Heidelberg Materials. “With a strong global autonomous deployment team working closely with best-in-class technology partners, we are now focused on scaling the technology in a disciplined, results-driven way.”
The company’s automation expansion it says further enhances safety and operational performance. The current rollout is part of a broader initiative to introduce more than 100 autonomous vehicles by the end of 2028.
Source: im-mining.com
