Autonomous trucking technology company Pronto.ai has launched two new autonomous haulage system (AHS) editions, expanding its product lineup to cover operations ranging from small quarries to ultra-class deep-pit mining sites, the company said.
The newly introduced Pronto AHS VLR and Pronto AHS VLR 360 systems add lidar and radar to Pronto’s existing vision-only autonomy platform, creating what the company describes as the industry’s first tiered autonomy architecture. The three systems are now offered under a unified portfolio branded as Pronto Editions.
The launch follows a recent operational milestone at a quarry operated by Heidelberg Materials in Lake Bridgeport, Texas, where Pronto’s vision-only AHS hauled more than two million tons of material in a mixed-fleet environment in less than eight months, according to the company.
Pronto said the expanded portfolio reflects the differing physical and operational demands of haulage across mining segments. While camera-based systems can provide sufficient perception for quarry-scale trucks, larger vehicles operating in deep pits require longer detection ranges and redundancy to operate safely in poor visibility caused by dust, fog, snow or heavy precipitation.
“Autonomy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition,” said Anthony Levandowski, chief executive of Pronto. “The physics of stopping a 100-ton truck in a Texas quarry are radically different from stopping a 400-ton hauler in a Chilean blizzard.”
The VLR edition combines cameras with long-range lidar and radar to maintain operation in degraded visual conditions, while the VLR 360 version adds full 360-degree sensor coverage around the vehicle. Pronto said the latter is designed for complex manoeuvres in congested or mixed-traffic mining environments.
“With the launch of Pronto Editions, we are declaring the end of the ‘sensor wars’,” Levandowski said. “We don’t use lidar because we can’t do vision; we use lidar where it’s the right physics to solve specific customer problems.”
The systems are designed to be OEM-agnostic and can be retrofitted to a wide range of haul trucks, including ultra-class models such as the Komatsu 980 and Caterpillar 798. Pronto said deployments of the VLR 360 system are already underway at production mining sites.
The move comes as mining companies increasingly look to automation to address labour shortages, improve safety and maintain productivity in large-scale operations, particularly in challenging environmental conditions.