Komatsu Autonomous Dump Truck – Video

 

The self-driving truck doesn’t really have a front or back. It can drive in either direction equally well thanks to four-wheel steering, which in turn means a strip mine doesn’t need to allocate space for one of the massive vehicles to turn around after each trip so a driver can see where they’re going. It can simply shuttle back and forth, reversing direction as needed.

 

 

The latest version of its Autonomous Haulage System dump truck, however, was designed from the ground up to be completely autonomous. As you can see, there’s no longer a driver’s cab.

In fact, aside from the direction the dumping bed raises, the self-driving truck doesn’t really have a front or back. It can drive in either direction equally well thanks to four-wheel steering, which in turn means a strip mine doesn’t need to allocate space for one of the massive vehicles to turn around after each trip so a driver can see where they’re going. It can simply shuttle back and forth, reversing direction as needed.

The other advantage to being able to operate in either direction is that Komatsu was able to design the new autonomous truck so that weight was evenly distributed between all four wheels, allowing it to maximize its payload—over 250 tons—which in turn means less trips back and forth to be emptied.