AUTOMATION
AI-POWERED AUTONOMY
TRANSFORMS MINING Autonomous tech is gaining traction on earth and space, with partnerships exploring the development of moon infrastructure and retrofitting vehicles WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS
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utonomous technology continues to carve in-roads throughout the mining sector – even extending to the realms of outer space. SafeAI and MACA recently announced a partnership to retrofit a fleet of 100 mixed vehicles. Together with SafeAI’s Australian partner, Position Partners, the companies will create one of the largest autonomous heavy equipment fleets in Australia, powering safer, more productive and more cost-effective mine sites. SafeAI has built a next-generation autonomous platform that pairs the latest in AI with heavy industry. The company’s platform is interoperable and vehicleagnostic, enabling mining and construction companies to retrofit any vehicle, from any manufacturer, with autonomous technology. With advanced multimodal sensors and significant onboard processing power, SafeAIenabled equipment can independently 76
May 2022
make efficient, accurate decisions to keep operations running smoothly and safely, 24/7. “The mining industry has had autonomous equipment for more than 20 years, but we’ve gone as far as we can go with the first iteration of this technology,” said Bibhrajit Halder, founder and CEO of SafeAI. “SafeAI and MACA are going all-in on the next generation of autonomy — a generation that is AI-powered, versatile and scalable to bring meaningful, widespread change to the mining industry.” MACA, a rapidly-growing contract miner that recently reported a $13bn pipeline of opportunities, needed a solution capable of scaling with its business. SafeAI’s interoperable retrofit technology unlocks newfound scalability and versatility by enabling the company to optimise its existing fleet, rather than forcing it to complete a highly time-consuming and costly transition to an entirely new fleet of autonomous vehicles.
