The system will look to provide customers with flexibility and efficiency in autonomous mining deployment, allowing them to operate any open standard-based vehicle and integrate it into existing fleets.
Wenco and Oxbotica both support an open and inter-operable ecosystem of partners that integrate solutions alongside existing mine infrastructure. Both companies believe this provides customers with greater flexibility and control for integrating new solutions while also reducing associated risks and costs. This approach also avoids ‘vendor lock-in’ and offers customers the freedom to choose preferred technologies, independent of their primary industrial systems. Furthermore, it enables autonomy suppliers that may be new to mining to integrate with customers’ existing operations.
This latest advancement builds on the vision of Open Autonomy – publicly announced by Wenco and Hitachi Construction Machinery at the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) Convention in Montreal in May 2019.
“We are very excited to be collaborating with Oxbotica,” says Andrew Pyne, Wenco president and CEO. “We are confident that combining Oxbotica’s proven capability in autonomy with our three decades worth of experience in interoperable fleet management systems for large mining customers enables us to create the industry’s first full-function open autonomy platform.
“Regardless of the strategies of other industrial autonomy vendors, Wenco and Oxbotica believe firmly in the principle of open systems and consider it the primary way to bring about our joint goals of widespread adoption of autonomous technology and safer, more productive industrial operations. Our joint platform will allow customers to choose any open standards-based vehicle and integrate it into their existing operations.”
Oxbotica was founded in 2014 out of the University of Oxford to develop an autonomy software platform that enables faster deployment of industry-specific autonomy applications.
“This collaboration with Wenco is a major milestone for Oxbotica,” adds Ozgur Tohumcu, CEO of Oxbotica. “Wenco’s industry experience in mining and their vision for Open Autonomy make this partnership extremely valuable for us and provides a great synergy with our own vision of Universal Autonomy – where any vehicle, in any environment, can understand where it is, what’s around it and what it should do next.
“The mining industry has proven to be at the forefront of deploying early generation autonomy systems because the business case has been clear for operators. We strongly believe an Open Autonomy architecture that enables new and innovative entrants, like Oxbotica, to join and speed up autonomy adoption will be beneficial for the whole industry. Together with Wenco, we would like to accelerate the adoption of autonomy in mining, making it much easier for mine operators to deploy autonomous technologies and enjoy the benefits.”