This Machine Is The Largest Robot On Earth
The future of robotics might not be quite what you think
Watching a long and lonely ore train snake its way through the scrubby flats of Western Australia is not a remarkable sight. Trains rumble through sparsely populated regions rich in ore and natural history every day carrying valuable minerals to ports on the coast. The trains are over two kilometers long and carry thousands of tons of ore from the large interior mining operations. At first glance, another such train does not stick out at all. It is not what the train is carrying or where it is going that is remarkable. It is what it is lacking that makes this train stand out.
The mining conglomerate Rio Tinto has created the first fully autonomous heavy freight train to carry its ore without the use of live conductors. Instead, the train is monitored from a nerve center hundreds of kilometers away where a team runs a host of autonomous trains from the same place.
The autonomous train system is called AutoHaul and it is the result of years of research and innovation. Rio Tinto claims it is the largest robot in the world, and they’re probably right.
One giant robot
The ore trains measure 2.4km in length and carry over 25,000 tons of materials. In the past, each train…
