RobotRisk Autonomous Systems Incident & Risk Register
RobotRisk / Caterpillar / 2023-08

Cat autonomous haul truck reverses into excavator at BHP's Goonyella mine

S2 · 08/2023 · Caterpillar · Goonyella Riverside mine, QLD, Australia

Record

CompanyCaterpillar
Categoryoff highway
Typecrash
Date08/2023
Time of daynot documented
LocationGoonyella Riverside mine, QLD, Australia
SeverityS2 (minor injury or single-unit damage)
Scale1 autonomous truck, 1 excavator
Confidencemedium
VerificationCited source on file; not independently re-verified
SourceMining Monthly

What happened

A loss of communications on the autonomous haulage circuit at BHP Mitsubishi Alliance's Goonyella open-cut coal mine in Queensland caused a Caterpillar truck operating in autonomous mode to resume motion and reverse into a manually operated excavator once comms were restored, before the excavator operator could clear the boom. Damage was limited to the excavator's stick cylinder; the Queensland Mines Inspectorate found no worker injuries but flagged it as a likely world-first autonomous-truck-to-excavator collision and told the site to review post-outage start-up procedures.

Caterpillar record context

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off highway context

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