Do mines actually use robots?

Yes. Mining is the least speculative corner of DEPLOY's record.

What is running. Ultra-class haul trucks driving themselves around open pits, blasthole drill rigs that position and drill without an operator in the cab, and control platforms that convert mixed fleets of ordinary trucks from different manufacturers to driverless operation. Each entry below is a reviewed deployment record with its own place, its own start date and its own sources.

Where. Named mines and quarries rather than territories in the abstract, including the Roy Hill and Christmas Creek iron ore operations and the Onslow Iron project in Australia, the Cote Gold mine in Ontario, a mine at Kamloops in British Columbia, the Maules Creek coal mine in New South Wales, Mount Isa in Queensland, an open-pit coal mine in Russia, and the Gabriela Mistral mine in Chile. Some records are held at country or state level and the page renders each at the granularity the registry holds rather than inflating one into the other.

Since when. The earliest start date on this record is 2008, and every record in this class carries a date. That is the striking part: these machines were in commercial service years before the earliest deployment DEPLOY holds for the classes that dominate the coverage, and the page shows those dates side by side rather than asking you to take the comparison on trust.

What the page will not do. Count trucks. These are counts of deployment records DEPLOY holds, never fleet sizes, and a mine absent from this page is one the registry has no reviewed deployment for. The page also keeps two things apart that vendors routinely merge: how many of these machines are NAMED autonomous, and how many the registry has actually classified. Those numbers are not the same, and both are shown.

What the record holds

Counted from the registry rather than asserted. Each entry is one system in one lifecycle state; a system running at several pits is held together rather than counted as several robots.

Systems in production service

7

Places

13

Earliest record

2008

10 entries drawn from 15 reviewed deployment records across 10 systems and 9 makers at 13 distinct places. 15 of the 15 records carry a start date, and 5 rest entirely on the maker’s own domain. Places range from single named pits to country-level records, and each is rendered at the granularity the registry holds.

How early this actually is

A claim that mining got there first means nothing without a yardstick, so the same query runs over the classes that dominate the coverage. Each date is the earliest reviewed deployment DEPLOY holds for that form factor, read live at page load. It is a statement about this registry’s records and not a claim about who was first in the world.

Named autonomous, and classified autonomous

These two numbers are routinely merged and they are not the same thing. 6 of the 10 reviewed mining models are sold under a name containing autonomous, driverless or robotic. 1 of them carry an autonomy classification on DEPLOY’s registry. The first count is the manufacturer’s word, read off the product name; the second is the registry’s own field. The gap is not evidence that these machines are not driverless, and the deployment records below are the evidence for that question. It is a reminder that a product name proves nothing.

The model carrying a classification: AutoMine (Sandvik), classified autonomous.

Three different claims, kept apart

Each column is attributed to what it actually describes. The third is the claim DEPLOY refuses to make.

In production service

What the registry marks operational, most recent first. Each machine is described in its own model record’s words.

Trials and validation

Deployments the registry marks as pilots. They are counted in no production total, because a fleet under validation at one site is a different claim from a system in routine service.

Common questions

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