Up close with the 300 tonne driverless trucks
It doesn't get much more remote than this. I'm in inland Western Australia, at Rio Tinto’s Greater Nammuldi iron ore mine.
No-one lives permanently here. Around 400 workers are on the site at any one time, and they are flown in, working between four and eight days, depending on their shift pattern, before flying home.
Giant trucks the size of townhouses, capable of hauling 300 tonnes, criss-cross red-earth roads in various sections of this open-pit mine complex.
For an outsider like me their size is intimidating enough, but multiplying that feeling is the knowledge that there's no driver at the wheel.
I sigh with relief as it deftly turns and continues in the direction we have just come. “Did it make you feel uncomfortable?,” asks the vehicle’s driver Dwane Pallentine, a production superintendent.
Greater Nammuldi has a fleet of more than 50 self-driving trucks that operate independently on pre-defined courses, along with a handful that remain manually driven and work separately in a different part of the mine.
