When Imperial Oil made the decision to implement autonomous haulage at its Kearl operation in the oil sands, the company pulled together a team of experts from Imperial, Finning and Caterpillar to apply the technology. Kearl, was the first application of Cat MineStar Command for hauling in the oil sands, in a remote northern location with unpredictable weather and ground conditions. And it was the first time Command for hauling was used on a Cat 797F. “This was a pretty large scale operation,” says Kevin Voros, site autonomy engineer for Finning. “And converting the entire operation is going to be a huge challenge, that’s why we are here, to tackle that challenge and provide support to Imperial Oil through this journey.”

The team utilized a combination of the MineStar suite of software including Fleet which is the dispatch system, Terrain which is the loading and grading system, and Command, which allows the truck to haul autonomously. In order to get the full value out of this autonomous mining system, everything needs to be working perfectly. But while the application was new, the technology itself had already been proven on a number of mine sites around the world and its implementation was being supported by a team of experts committed to its success. 

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