As someone who is an autonomous controller/builder in Western Australia you've covered this very well. Of course things are alot more complex than what it seems here, I could talk about this for hours. Great video. For those worried about jobs, it takes quite a few people to run these robots, I myself was trained up from a truck driver back in the day. Awesome.
True, but looking into the mindset of corporate and who the product is aimed at, overall the primary incentive of the technology is to reduce labour costs and employ fewer people.
@@gqqggq7127 The goal is accuracy and efficiency. There's also much less wear and tear, as the trucks ALWAYS operate within their limits. As has been mentioned, there are many people involved in running autonomous equipment, possibly even more than staffed. No jobs lost, and new, more interesting, jobs created.
I worked for a packing shed for fruit in my local area and they moved to automation for their cold storage and people freaked out but it requires a whole different set of people to work. Just shifts jobs and opportunities and makes the warehouse/ processing facility run more efficiently
@@gqqggq7127 to lower the cost so when oil price drops as it's doing now they can still compete and continue to employ those that do keep their job like the maintainers.
i'd like to see more footage of the workers talking about what they do and know. Its always great to get their perspective on things. Also more audio of the equipment instead of loud rock music.
This is the cannibalistic side of capitalism. Each truck used to employ at least 4 people (more likely 5 for coverage of holidays, time off, medical leave.) Those jobs are gone, those families have no income, thereby will not be able to support the community they live in and will be forced to leave. That money ceases to flow through local businesses and more empty store fronts. Crime rises and the community becomes less lively. I'm saying this as a heavy duty mechanic who doesn't want big companies selling off resources in an area and sending the money to head offices far away or to appease the investors who couldn't care less about the dying communities.
@@armandoledesma3699no he said they check it. Certain fluids get charged at different intervals. They typically change the engine oil every 250 hours of run time
I’m guessing it’s just a camera drone, but it still feels super futuristic that you get interrupted by an electric flying machine while filming a semi autonomous mine in Canada
It’s a good thing the trucking industry is going Autonomous.. it’s a smart move honestly.. you cut operational costs and save tons of money as a company. Plus you invest in advanced technology compared to a human being.
I’m torn on this topic. There are a lot of people that would LOVE to have a career running this haul trucks. I understand that it’s sometimes a boring job. It’s a dangerous job too. But if we remove the operator positions… which is where we are headed… then we will lose a LOT of jobs. 😞
Did you hear the yogurt lid story. These things are useless there's a team of people running around supporting them. They need smooth roads to drive on, meaning there's a whole crew making sure the roads are smooth. The jobs just moved to ones that don't require constant attention
I completely agree with you, but having talked with people from liebherr before, it's hard to find people that are willing to drive the trucks. And even harder to retain them.
As a retired operating engineer, I find it interesting that the extra effort for the haul road is important, but not so much if there is a human driver. Its all about the money.
Thank you so much for finishing the Video tour of Mine with the Look out. The Oil Sands have got hate, bad rap from environmental people saying they are big polluters of the mother earth. In my Humble opinion what you show at end make there argument very wrong. Its wonderful to see the trees. What is wrong with REMOVAL of the "OIL" that nothing can grow in. OIL very close to surface of earth. The Oil company production on usable energy production is good for the earth in oil sands production. He mentioned a RIVER, bet that river is not contaminated as it was before oil was removed. The self Driving off road massive Haul trucks is amazing TEC. The JOB replacement of DRIVER, probably puts that driver in a massive motor grader, cat make monster road graders, have seen them work 3 to 4 across smoothing haul roads. The Dump driver can learn to operate a D-11 CAT or motor grader if he or she wants to keep job. Learn maintenance skills, the other comments said there is tons of turn over of Dump drivers. I think operator engineering UNIONS are more open to jobs going AWAY. I remember in the Late 1970s any excavator on tracks had a "OILER" very old school steam shovel JOB. I remember when the UNION stopped the Oiler position. There was NO need to have an oiler on modern Excavators. The Longshoreman on other hand are Fighting this big time on dock work container haul trucks on docks. The Longshoreman UNION doesn't want there Jobs taken away by auto drive system. Over the big pond in Amsterdam the dock container trucks are all computer 🖥️ run trucks in big ports. A bunch of workers in computer room running the trucks after unload from ships. Lots of Excavator Manufacturing is starting to do auto dig for long straight ditch lines. Lots of remote control ( no operator) in cab. Now with 3& 4-D dig system that are installed on excavator it auto digs depth of cut. Slowly removing all people out of machine. Here we go with the Termination era of monster machines.
@@AaronWitt I'm so glad you made the trip and these two videos! I literally had a conversation with one of our senior leaders yesterday saying that I wish we had some better PR out there about what we do up here. THANK YOU!!!
@@johnwilsonb5531 Great point. I understand the issue you talk about. There was anti mining ⛏️ videos that said these ponds can filter so to speak into Rivers. I just hope in my Humble opinion that these mines can somehow build a big filtered system to remove contaminants from water. Those ponds are a big issue on what to do to clean the water.
Great point at the end of the video about extracting and reclaiming. In a day and age where the powers that be claim electric is the way to go, you don't see them doing this kind of reclamation work in third world countries where they strip mine for lithium.
The reclamation work is ongoing and a good thing. But this video only shows when a pit is refilled and does not begin to show the scope of the job ahead. The big issue is the tailings ponds. They have yet to figure out what to do with millions of cubic meters of sludge.
You go Aron Witt, tell us everything, I am a Certified welder retired. I would love to work in that factory wielding even at my 69 years. I wonder if I could get a job welding there??????
There ya go, Tesla just has better marketing, but construction as well as Agriculture is ahead of the game already. If Skynet starts anywhere, it's gonna be the manufacturing and construction sites ;)
Can you go through how these trucks are automated? Do they use GPS and an RTK station, or do they use some correction service? Do they use Computer Vision? It would be cool seeing it
The haul roads and possible routes are first mapped out with GPS, once this is done the haul trucks will follow essentially GPS waypoints (although they deviate slightly on purpose side to side to avoid creating ruts). The trucks then analyze what’s ahead of them using the GPS of other equipment and “ask” permission to move into a space. These permission lines stretch out about 100m in front of the truck so the truck knows it’s safe to proceed along it’s route. If an equipped piece of equipment or a light vehicle intersects with its permission line the truck will go into exception and stop. This requires a pit patroller to visually check on the situation and see why the truck stopped before allowing it to proceed again. Likewise if the ODS (object detection system) detects something in the trucks path it will stop and require a manual restart as well. I helped build the very first autonomous 980 in the world, they’re super cool!
Interesting seeing the colours of the mode lights, blinking amber here. The CAT Command system I’ve seen has a blue mode light when working autonomously, could be an Australian thing also.
Yeah CAT and Komatsu have different colour schemes for autonomous. With Komatsu amber is autonomous, green is manual. It will flash red if there’s a problem, or all 3 will flash when the truck is suspended. 👍🏼
Seems like it just takes the fun away from actually driving the trucks. I'm not saying that there are significant pro's to this out fit. Not bouncing around from rough roads, in the event of a crash the drivers will he safe or the same in the event of a malfunction. But I run heavy equipment for a Limestone quarry in KY. None of our equipment is nearly this big, but there's just a surreal feeling about being in a building sized truck!
As an industrial tire tech, I would have a few concerns in my field. A lot of the job of a good operator is to keep there ears open, I want somebody to explain to me how this autonomous truck can identify a tread separation or hardware failure.
The large haul trucks are outfitted with tire sensors monitoring the pressure and temperature changes and alerting the maintenance or condition monitoring team when the readings are above the limits. Tires are also vigorously inspected for damage and wear including rotating the fronts to the back.
Interesting that despite all the resources that Komatsu could apply to making AI trucks work they still can't cope with quite small changes to their operating environment e.g. the haul road not being flat, e.g. silver foil yoghurt lids messing up their sensors. Gives some real world perspective to claims by Elon Musk etc that fully autonomous cars will be able to drive anywhere soon.
Ai? I would not really call it that it’s just running around in predetermined Geo fences, with predetermined routes and parameters,, if it starts making decisions on its own like a driver would do then that’s Ai. If a warm blooded driver see the yogurt call Taylor he’s gonna drive around it is or was it. That was the situation it was not programmed into the auto pilot, so thus therefore it’s not decision making artificial intelligence.
When one truck has a fault, they all stop till someone goes out to rectify the problem. All production stops. Electric brains do not replace human brains.
The only jobs lost when going Autonomous trucks is the lazy that dont want to upskill to another role. Plenty of positions to keep these trucks running. Dont make your self unemployable and blame someone else. Ps Love the content mate!
This is foolish!! If these mining companies are becoming so stinking greedy that they decide to change over to a filthy computer operator for their trucks and other machinery, then we are in a very disgusting level of irresponsibility. Only a space cadet geek would think this is an intelligent choice.
CONGRADULATIONS to SUNCOR, KOMATSU and every other company that is going autonimous, eliminating 1000's of good paying jobs, so they can get just a tiny bit richer, while weekening the economies of the countries they operate in !!!!! Keep it up and soon you'll have no one to buy your products!
Autonomous mining trucks are advanced but nowhere near as advanced as autonomous cars, cars on a public road have to deal with 100,000 times more data in real time, such as thousands of random vehicles, random humans, obstructions, weather, traffic lights, mining trucks only have to stay on a perfectly graded road in a pre defined area, all it has to do is go from point A to point B so pretty easy compared to passenger vehicles on a public road.
This isn’t AI, it’s not thinking, it’s robotic, you people need to use correct wording, there is no ai yet, when you need a slave you don’t want a lot of thinking going on, you want production on your terms
I think it's absolute b******* that can make these trucks autonomest. When the oil companies are making billions of freaking dollars, it should be outlawed To have autonomous vehicles
@fastfishbruh5307 who cares. Too save a few dollars on wages.... F that sh't. Safety. More efficient. Been running like this all over the world. It comes down to saving a few dollars.. F that Sh't
@@AaronWitt So truck drivers can apply for any other job and get it because the oil company doesn't need them as truck drivers 🙄. It's not about the 1000's and 1000's of other jobs it's about the jobs they are taking away from average Canadians .
@@gregoryspencer3619 suncor has said they will not be getting rid of any jobs just transitioning ppl to other opportunities. They pay for ppl to get educated. Plus the work force is dwindling. Every company up here is looking for workers
They run autonomous haul trucks at the elkview mine in sparwood bc, i guess they have been for roughly 3 years now. Besides the obvious struggle of operating in the rockies, i remember hearing the komatsu engineers explaining that another challenge theyve been fixing was the lidar collision detection system picking up spill rock etc. Compared to a mine in Aus where the dirt is red and easy to see more or less, its obviously quite the opposite in a coal mine where everything is black and muddy a good majority of the time. Komatsu has come a long ways in tweaking there Lidar in picking up objects in such conditions which is rather impressive to me
Nothing like knowing the company is going to layoff 200 employees at the end of 2025 to replace them with autonomous trucks. Yes it’s going to happen i work here at Suncor base mine
lowers the cost of the oil .it makes them able to compete with other oil sources. still will need all the maintainers maybe more with the autonomous trucks. the roads need to be smoother and wider for example.
@@ronblack7870 it doesn't do a thing for the price of oil. what it does do, is line the greedy pockets of the shareholders, and weeken the overall economy by eliminating many good paying jobs. A perfect example of "the rich get richer"
Unless you are physicaly next to these machines, your brain does not understand how big they are. On the 930, the distance from the drivers seat to the right hand mirror is 22 feet!
Interesting hearing a there autonomous trucks would stop over a yogurt lid but I regularly hear about cattle being hit by Komatsu autonomous trucks here in Aus… makes such a mess
Calling it AI is pretty clickbait. None of that is AI. It's a rule based system. You don't want AI doing something that you must have a defined result.
