Currently, autonomous vehicles are primarily used in the mining
and agricultural industries. For example, Komatsu has autonomously
hauled more than two billion tons of surface material and it
expects to deploy an additional 150 trucks to the Canadian oil
sands over the next seven years.1 Not to be outdone,
Caterpillar is set to deploy a fleet of autonomous trucks and
autonomous blast drills for the Rio Tinto Koodaideri iron mine in
Western Australia.2
In the construction industry, autonomous, semi-autonomous and
remote control equipment that are currently being developed include
excavators, dozers and robotic bricklayers.3
There is evidence that the use of autonomous vehicles and
equipment improves productivity, thus increasing profitability. For
example, in its 2017 mining operations, Rio Tinto reported that
driverless trucks proved to be more efficient than their manned
counterparts, as the autonomous vehicles operated on average 700
hours longer and with 15 per
