Autonomous truck testing milestone: haul road design insights for mine planners
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell

First reported on Australian Mining
30 Second Briefing
Fully autonomous haul truck testing has reached a “significant milestone” through a tri-partite collaboration using a retrofitted Komatsu HD1500 platform supplied by EACON Mining Technology. The partners are running driverless trials on active mine haul roads, integrating EACON’s autonomous haulage system with existing fleet management and collision-avoidance infrastructure. For geotechnical and mine planners, the work points to tighter control of haul profiles, consistent speed and braking behaviour on ramps, and potential redesign of traffic patterns around mixed autonomous–manual fleets.
Technical Brief
- For other mines, a key implication is the ability to automate brownfield fleets without wholesale truck replacement.
Our Take
Komatsu features in several recent equipment and distribution pieces in our database, suggesting its autonomous truck testing in Australia is being backed by a wider push to strengthen dealer networks and large-fleet support capacity in Europe and the UK.
The presence of EACON Mining Technology alongside Komatsu points to a growing role for third‑party autonomy specialists in retrofitting or augmenting OEM haulage platforms, which can shorten deployment timelines for Australian mines compared with waiting for fully in‑house OEM solutions.
Among the 562 Mining stories in our coverage, autonomy trials in Australia often precede commercial roll‑outs to other high‑volume markets, so successful testing here is likely to shape how Komatsu packages autonomous haulage offerings for its construction and quarrying clients referenced in the BIA Group and Marubeni‑Komatsu articles.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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