Automatic vehicle monitoring as applied in the mining industry

The technology necessary to locate a vehicle has been available for several years, although there have been very few systems that are really cost-efficient. This paper presents an enhanced AVM system specifically designed to improve productivity in open pit mining. The system includes a vehicle location sub-system that tracks the heavy haulage trucks that move ore from shovel to crusher, and gathers additional information from on-board sensors on the trucks and other devices. This information is processed in a real-time computer that manipulates the system via direct commands to the vehicles. The result is an automatic system that responds to changing demands in real time, to directly maximize operating effectivness of the mine.