Iván Hernández Dalas: Aramine AutoNav makes mining safer at Reward Gold Mine

Epiroc installed AutoNav Tele on an Aramine L350D loader operating at a mine in Australia.

Epiroc installed AutoNav Tele on an Aramine L350D loader operating at a mine in Australia. | Credit: Aramine

The Reward Gold Mine site at Hill End, New South Wales, Australia, is deploying a new autonomous loader. The Vertex-operated mine is using the Aramine L350D mining loader, equipped with Epiroc’s AutoNav Tele software from partner RCT.

The L350D is a diesel-powered small underground loader that is designed for narrow-vein mining, making it suitable for underground mining operations.

RCT works to make mining safer and again profitable

The historic gold mining town lay dormant for decades after mining operations ceased around 2010. The town is northwest of Sydney, on the east coast of Australia. Today, the site is undergoing a revival with the construction of a brand-new plant tailored for small-scale mining.

“This is more than just a machine installation,” said Owen Perrott, RCT’s East Coast branch manager. “We’re introducing technology that can access areas previously unreachable, in this narrow-vein mine, unlocking gold reserves left behind for decades.”

With the Aramine machine, Vertex aims to efficiently extract gold from narrow, hard-to-reach veins, demonstrating the potential for innovative technology in small-scale mining operations.

RCT, formerly Remote Control Technologies, said its AutoNav Tele allows remote operators to control the loader with the same functionality from a safe location, removing them from the machine while providing access to narrow veins.

image of a epiroc AutoNav teleoperation console with user chair, controls and monitor screens.

AutoNav Tele moves operators to a secure, climate-controlled environment, away from hazardous zones. | Credit: Epiroc

AutoNav enables a path to full autonomy

AutoNav currently offers five levels of autonomy:

  • Level 1 – Line-of-sight control
  • Level 2 – Tele-remote
  • Level 3 – Semi-automation
  • Level 4 – Multi-machine automation
  • Level 5 – Fleet automation

RCT said this project is the first time it has installed its technology on a Vertex-owned Aramine loader. With the success of this project, the Epiroc unit said it hopes to replicate the setup for other mine owners.

The installation was challenging due to the machine’s size and the limited available space, and it required the team to collaborate with Aramine to ensure the machine met Australian standards. In addition, RCT designed a custom “mini” AutoNav hut that it delivered to the site to cater to the client’s specific needs.

SITE AD for the 2026 Robotics Summit save the date.

Operators use mini AutoNav hut

AutoNav enables faster shift changeovers, reduces idle time, and maximizes output. Operators can remain above ground and don’t have to spend travel time traversing underground shafts to arrive at the work site. They can simply switch out of the operating chair.

The mini hut is not typically used at most sites, as it is approximately half the size of a standard AutoNav Centre. This introduced space constraints for the hardware, but Vertex needed a mini hut to accommodate its mine structure and small portal.

“Due to the demand I have been receiving from other sites for smaller hut offerings, I thought it would be a good opportunity to design a layout for one, from the ground up,” said Perrott.

 

The post Aramine AutoNav makes mining safer at Reward Gold Mine appeared first on The Robot Report.



View Source

Popular posts from this blog

Iván Hernández Dalas: 4 Show Floor Takeaways from CES 2019: Robots and Drones, Oh My!

Image
We’ve had some time to recuperate from the madness of CES, in which more than 150,000 attendees and thousands of exhibitors displayed their latest gadgets, gizmos and yes, even robots, on the CES show floor. Last week’s reporter’s notebook focused on the collection of startups around the Eureka Park area of CES, but several of the same trends were evident on the main South Hall 2 area of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where drones, robotics, AR/VR, and gaming took center stage. While most of our time was spent at CES hosting the Service Robots Arrive in Daily Life event, we did have some time during the week to visit the show floor and record observations. Here’s what we saw on the show floor, as well as some of our own individual meetings: 1. Underwater drones make a big splash On the main floor, there was no busier aerial drone booth than the DJI booth, but that is expected given the company’s dominance in the space. But once you got past that, you noticed a lot more drone co...
Read more

Iván Hernández Dalas: How automation and farm robots are transforming agriculture

Image
Source: EOS Data Analytics Agriculture is becoming the most high-tech industry today. All the top-notch technologies are finding a place in the way we produce, harvest, and distribute our crops. And in all cases, farm automation and robots are not an affordable luxury, but a necessary minimum due to tackling the rising global food demand. Agricultural robots can mitigate labor shortages by automating tasks like planting, harvesting, and weeding, while also supporting sustainable practices. Combined with satellite imagery tools for data-driven farming, these innovations can make precision agriculture more efficient, resilient, and environmentally responsible. According to the United Nations report , by 2050, the world will need 70% more food to feed nearly 9.7 billion people. Considering this demand, farm robots and remote sensing are the cornerstone of the proper work of the supply chain. Smart machines arise for the farm Farm robots are no longer experimental concepts — they ...
Read more

Iván Hernández Dalas: Physical Intelligence open-sources Pi0 robotics foundation model

Image
Physical Intelligence, the San Francisco-based startup that has raised more than $400 million , has open-sourced its Pi0 robotic foundation model. Pi0 was introduced a few months ago and can be tuned to a range of tasks, including folding laundry, cleaning a table, scooping coffee beans, and more. Physical Intelligence has released the code and weights for Pi0 as part of its experimental openpi repository on GitHub. It also provides checkpoints for a few “simple tasks” on available platforms such as ALOHA and DROID, example code to run inference on real-world and simulated robot platforms, and the code for fine-tuning the base π0 model for your own tasks and platforms. The company said between 1-20 hours of data was sufficient to tune Pi0 to a variety of tasks in its own experiments. HuggingFace has also prepared a PyTorch port of openpi for those developers who prefer PyTorch over JAX. “We believe that general purpose models that can control any robot to perform any task will b...
Read more