How Luck Stone is shaping the future of hauling (Part 2)

The Bull Run Plant in Chantilly, Virginia, has a history of being Luck Stone’s go-to site for pilot projects. Photo: Luck Stone

According to Donnelli, “a lot of very complex software” is necessary on board the truck so it can make operational decisions.

“It’s aware of the grade of the road that it’s on,” Donnelli says. “It’s aware of its traction parameters and steering curvatures. There’s definitely a lot of complexity to it, especially on the software side.”

Back-office software also plays a role in the technology’s effectiveness, he adds.

“It’s the application called MineStar Office,” Donnelli says. “That’s really the command-and-control application. In the quarry office, we have a person who is monitoring everything that’s going on at the site. They can see a site map and where all the trucks are. They set production goals for the day and, from there, the system takes over and executes to optimize the daily plan.”

Donnelli depicts a real-world scenario to illustrate the technology more fully.

“Let’s say you have a quarry with four trucks combined with a loader,” he says. “You might have a waste area for overburden. You might have a crusher or stockpiles where you want to place material. The system basically has a digital model of the quarry showing all the locations in GPS coordinates. From there, that back-office system is telling the trucks to ‘go to the loader.’ So, the truck goes there.”

A human loader operator is still part of the equation with autonomous haulers, Donnelli says. That operator plays a role in the hauler’s performance.

“Loader operators have a screen where they interface with the system,” he says. “They set a spot point to position the truck and, once loaded, they tell the truck to depart. The systems on the loader know what materials it just loaded, so the truck knows what material it has.

“The MineStar system will then say: ‘go to this stockpile,’” he adds. “Or, ‘go to the crusher.’ The truck then drives itself there.”

Still, a quarry is always evolving. So how does Caterpillar’s Command for hauling account for environmental changes?

“Some areas of quarries tend to be more static,” Donnelli says. “You’ve got certain haul roads that don’t change very often. We consider those to be more ‘static’ areas. You survey those initially, and maybe they don’t change for weeks, months or years.

“When you get into the loading area, we consider that to be a dynamic area,” he adds. “In a dynamic area, we have a couple things we can do. The truck can survey the face as it moves through the site, and we can update our GPS data based on that.”

An alternative is to equip pickup trucks or lighter-duty vehicles on-site with a GPS system.

“These can drive the face and survey where that toe line is,” Donnelli says. “We can use the supervisor vehicles in the field or even a dozer at a dump. Let’s say you’ve got a dump at a mine site. The dozer would survey the edge of the dump with its blade tip, and then we have that GPS information.”

How people fit in

Johnson

While running a hauler autonomously requires a variety of technologies, people will be essential to the successful execution of the project at Luck Stone.

“There’s a deep planning team that’s going to be involved,” says Denise Johnson, group president of Caterpillar Resource Industries. “We’ve already identified dedicated leaders who will be assigned to the project. They’re going to lead a lot of the workshops, and there’s going to be a lot of preparation that takes place over the next year – not only in the change management and the technology that needs to be installed from an infrastructure perspective, but also to outline what the key KPIs are that we agree on together for the project to be successful.

To Luck, people will not only be key to ensuring the success of the project but in stewarding the technology’s sustainability.
“For some of our frontline folks and for other people in the industry across the country, they may see this as a threat,” Luck says.

“They’ll say: ‘This means I’m not going to have a job, right Charlie?’”

Luck has a pointed response when he hears that sort of question.

“Every time we have moved forward with technology, we have always needed people to understand the fundamentals of what we do,” he says. “[The fundamentals] of blasting, hauling, crushing, equipment operation. So, what we’re going to do is take the talent that we have, step it forward and step them up.”

The opportunity at hand, Luck adds, is one that empowers people.

“We see this as a huge opportunity for the growth and development of people, as well as an opportunity for associates to enhance their experience and feel even more fulfilled at work,” Luck says.

Chewning agrees.

“There are a number of people in our company who are incredible innovators and very forward-thinking,” he says. “One in particular is John Thompson, a regional operations manager in northern Virginia with responsibility for Luck Stone’s Bull Run Plant. He’s one of those individuals who always sees the future that not everybody sees. He’s been beating the drum on this and encouraging us to chase it for a long time. It’s been really exciting.”

Want to learn more about this project. Read Part 1 of P&Q’s two-part series highlighting the partnership between Luck Stone and Caterpillar here.

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