BELAZ Unveils a Driverless Dump Truck at Innoprom Belarus

BELAZ, the Belarusian maker of mining equipment, has presented an entirely new model at Innoprom Belarus: a dump truck that leaves the assembly line with no driver’s place in the cab, fitted instead with a high-performance processor and an autopilot.

Dmitry Yeliseev, deputy chief designer of BELAZ, said robotics has become urgent because there are not enough people to work in open pits, and because quarries need steadier operating rhythms. “A robot solves these problems as software: we orchestrate the fleet and line it up to work with the excavator that is needed. Before we bring a robot to the customer, we offer a simulation of the quarry, in which we work through both manual and unmanned modes and let them judge the gain before the system is applied on their site.”

Training for unmanned operation of special equipment is a wider industry trend, and Belarusian engineers are keeping pace. New machines will continue to be serviced outside Belarus: more than 30 branded BELAZ service centers operate worldwide.

Boris Gorbunov, service director of the BELAZ trading house, called accessible, high-quality service one of the company’s main competitive advantages. About 2,600 people support the equipment in Russia, roughly 70 percent of them in service roles, from engineering staff to mechanics and diagnosticians. “And what matters is that the service infrastructure grows every year.”

Alexander Grushko, head of process-equipment procurement and project development at Russia’s Severstal, said the technology is clearly promising and worth pursuing. “We definitely need domestic and friendly technologies that can be rolled out at enterprises in the Russian Federation, and we believe in this one. We are watching it closely. We believe that in the medium term it will find successful use at sites in Russia.”

At this year’s Innoprom Belarus, BELAZ also showed several new gas-powered and electric dump trucks, hybrid machines with payloads from 90 to more than 200 tonnes, and a new 220-tonne hydrogen truck intended as the flagship of sales.